German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called on Russia to reduce tension ahead of his trip , which will take him to Kiev on Monday and Moscow on Tuesday. A German official said Berlin did not expect “concrete results” but that diplomacy was important.
Scholz warned that there will be sanctions if Moscow invades neighboring Ukraine .
“We cannot perfectly predict the day, but we have been saying for some time that we are in the window and that an invasion – a major military action – by Russia in Ukraine could begin to be seen at any moment,” said the National Security Adviser of the White House, Jake Sullivan, to CNN.
Sullivan said that Washington would continue to share intelligence with the world to deny Moscow the ability to mount a pretext for an attack.
US officials said they could not confirm reports that US intelligence indicated that Russia planned to invade the country on Wednesday.
US President Joe Biden , who is scheduled to speak with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Sunday, told Putin in a conversation on Saturday that the West would respond decisively to any invasion and that such an attack would harm and isolate to Moscow.
Putin wants guarantees from the United States and NATO that include blocking Ukraine’s entry into the Atlantic military alliance , forgoing the deployment of missiles near Russian borders, and reducing NATO’s military infrastructure in Europe to 1997 levels.
Washington considers many of the proposals unworkable, but has pressed the Kremlin to discuss them jointly with Washington and its European allies.
DIPLOMATIC MEANS
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said diplomatic channels remained open after talks with his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on Saturday .
“The diplomatic path remains open. The way for Moscow to show that it wants to follow that path is simple. It must de-escalate, not escalate,” Blinken said after their meetings in the US Pacific archipelago, Hawaii.
In an hour-long conversation on Saturday, US President Joe Biden told Russia’s Vladimir Putin that the West would respond decisively to any invasion of Ukraine , adding that it would also cause widespread suffering and isolate Moscow. .
Neither side said there had been any progress.
The Kremlin reported that Putin told Biden that Washington had not taken Russia’s main concerns into account and had not received any “substantial responses” on key issues of his security demands.
Washington on Saturday ordered most of its embassy staff to immediately leave Ukraine amid the threat of invasion.
Many of Washington’s European allies and other countries have also reduced or evacuated staff from their missions in Kiev and urged their citizens to leave or avoid traveling to Ukraine.
