US and Russia face deep differences ahead of talks on Ukraine

WILMINGTON, Del. – After a heated debate between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin over the accumulation of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, both sides insist that they hope that a way to defuse tensions could be opened during their diplomatic talks. scheduled for January.

But with less than two weeks to go before senior US and Russian officials meet in Geneva, the gap is wide and the prospect of finding a way out of the crisis is not without its drawbacks.

Biden told reporters on Friday that he had advised Putin when he spoke by telephone a day earlier that the forthcoming talks could only work if the Russian leader “de-escalated, not escalated, the situation” in the coming days. The US president said he also tried to make it clear to Putin that the US and its allies were ready to hit Russia with punitive sanctions if the Russians invaded Ukraine further.

“I made it clear to President Putin that if he made other moves in Ukraine we would have severe sanctions,” Biden said. “We will increase our presence in Europe with NATO allies.”

Meanwhile, Biden’s national security team on Friday turned its attention to preparations for the Geneva talks, scheduled for January 9 and 10, to discuss the gathering of about 100,000 Russian troops on its border with Ukraine.

The Geneva talks, which will be led by the United States by senior State Department officials, will be followed by Russia-NATO Council talks and a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Biden is scheduled to speak by telephone Sunday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The two leaders plan to reconsider preparations for upcoming diplomatic commitments, according to the White House.

Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken briefed Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday on the Biden-Putin summits and discussed the forthcoming summit.

“The next two weeks will be difficult,” said Daniel Fried, a former US ambassador to Poland who served as top adviser to Eastern Europe to Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “The Biden administration has done a pretty good job of outlining, framing the negotiations. But the toughest test has not yet come, because Putin will continue to engage in threats and violations to see how determined we are.”

While Biden reiterated that he was ready to impose sanctions that would resonate throughout Russia, Kremlin officials reiterated their warning to Biden of a “colossal mistake” that could have a huge impact on an already troubled US relationship. .

A top Putin aide said Friday that Russia was adhering to its demands for written security guarantees. Moscow wants to codify that any future NATO expansion should exclude Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet bloc and demands that the bloc remove its offensive weapons from Russia’s neighboring countries.

“We will not allow our initiatives to be stifled in endless discussions,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the state-run RIA-Novosti news agency on Friday. “If there is no constructive response within a reasonable time and the West continues its aggressive course, Russia must take all necessary measures to maintain a strategic balance and remove unacceptable threats to our security.”

The Biden government and NATO allies have made it clear that Russia’s demands are not essential.

Seemingly unrealistic rhetoric has made some in Washington wonder how effective conversations can be.

Following the Biden-Putin phone call, a group of 24 former U.S. national security officials and Russian experts — a group that includes several officials who served in the Obama, George W. Bush, and Clinton administrations — issued a statement urging Biden to publicly outlined the penalties Russia would face if Putin took military action.

The signatories of the statement included several former US ambassadors, including Fried, Russian envoys Michael McFaul and Alexander Vershbow, and Ukrainian envoys Steven Pifer and John Herbst.

“We believe that the United States, in close consultation with its NATO allies and Ukraine, should take immediate steps to influence the Kremlin’s cost-benefit calculations before the Russian leadership chooses further military escalation,” the group wrote. . “Such a response would include a package of large and painful sanctions that would apply immediately if Russia attacked Ukraine. Ideally, the outline of these sanctions would now be communicated to Moscow so that the Kremlin has a clear understanding of the magnitude of the economic blow that will face “.

The Russians, for their part, continue to argue that they pose an existential threat to Ukraine.

Lavrov noted on Friday the increase in arms supplies to Ukraine and the growing number and range of joint military exercises conducted by Western powers with Ukraine, accusing “the Kiev regime of course perceives this support as a white card for the use of violence ». He added that Russia would protect its citizens living in eastern Ukraine.

“As for the people of Donbass, home to hundreds of thousands of our citizens, Russia will take all necessary measures to protect them,” he said. “An adequate response will be given to any possible military provocations from Kiev against Donbass.”

Simon Miles, a diplomat and international Cold War historian at Duke University, said it would be wrong for the White House to let “Russia unilaterally set the pace for what is to unfold.”

“Anything the US can do to keep the Russians on their feet, as opposed to letting the Kremlin set the agenda, will be important in securing a favorable solution,” Miles said.

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Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.