U.S., Russian Foreign Ministers to Meet as Ukraine Tensions Soar
The chief diplomats of the US and
Russia are to meet in Sweden on Thursday as tensions soar after Washington
expressed concern about Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine and
warned of ‘high-impact’ sanctions.
US secretary of State Antony Blinken
and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov are to hold talks near Stockholm on
the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe.
The OSCE is one of the few
international dialogue forums to which both the US and Russia belong.
Since Russia’s invasion
of Crimea in 2014, the body has been tasked with monitoring the respect of
peace accords aimed at resolving the conflict with separatists in eastern
Ukraine.
Kiev’s Western
allies have in recent weeks been sounding the alarm about Russia massing troops
along Ukraine’s borders, amid fears of a possible invasion.
Moscow, which is accused of backing
the separatists fighting Kiev, has denied preparing an attack and accuses NATO
of stoking tensions.
At a NATO meeting in Latvia’s capital
Riga on Wednesday, Blinken said he was ‘deeply
concerned by evidence that Russia has made plans for significant aggressive
moves against Ukraine.’
‘We don’t know
whether President Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know that he’s putting in
place the capacity to do so on short order, should he so decide,’ he said.
Blinken insisted ‘diplomacy is
the only responsible way to resolve this potential crisis’ but warned
there would be ‘far-reaching and long-lasting
consequences’ for Moscow if it pushed ahead with any
aggression.
‘We made it
clear to the Kremlin that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of
high-impact economic measures that we’ve refrained
from using in the past,’ Blinken said.
Moscow on Wednesday hit back by
accusing Ukraine of massing tens of thousands of troops in the country’s east, as
worries grow over an escalation.
Putin also called for talks with the
West aimed at providing ‘legal guarantees’ against
NATO’s further
eastward expansion and the deployment of any weapons systems near the Russian
border.
After a large part of Eastern Europe
joined the US-led bloc following the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow refuses
to accept that Ukraine may one day follow suit -- even though Kiev’s membership
talks are currently stalled.
For his part, Ukrainian president
Volodymyr Zelensky called for direct talks with Moscow over the festering
conflict with separatists in the east of his country, which has already left
13,000 dead.
Prior to meeting Lavrov, Blinken is
due to hold talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba on the sidelines
of the OSCE meeting, held near Stockholm’s Arlanda
airport.
In addition to Ukraine, other issues
likely to be discussed include the migrant crisis on the Belarus-EU border and
the resurgence of clashes between OSCE members Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Planned long ago, the OSCE meeting ‘comes at a
crucial moment’, the US ambassador to the body, Michael
Carpenter, said as tensions spike on Europe’s doorstep.
The EU reached an agreement
Wednesday on new sanctions against Belarus, and the US would follow suit soon,
the US State Department said.
The OSCE ministers’ plenary
session is not expected to lead to the adoption of any major agreements, as
unanimity is required.
Moscow frequently blocks resolutions
on Ukraine, because Crimea is described as Ukrainian or Russia is characterised
as a direct actor in the conflict, while Moscow officially sees it as an
internal Ukrainian conflict.
The Blinken-Lavrov talks are the
first high-level meeting between the two superpowers since a summit between
presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in Geneva in June.
The two foreign ministers already
met in May, at an Arctic Council meeting in Iceland.