The year 2002 has barely started but Joe Biden intends not to let go in the Ukrainian case. “President Biden has made it clear that the United States and its allies will respond vigorously if Russia further invades Ukraine”White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement after a phone call on Sunday January 2 between the US president and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We appreciate the unwavering support for Ukraine [de la part des Etats-Unis] “, wrote M. Zelensky on Twitter. “We spoke of the joint actions of Ukraine, the United States and its partners to maintain peace in Europe and prevent a worsening of the situation”.
According to the White House spokeswoman, Biden assured Zelensky of Washington’s willingness to include Ukraine in negotiations over its own future. On January 9 and 10, Russia and the United States will have talks on Ukraine in Geneva. Led by US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and her Russian counterpart Sergei Riabkov, they will be followed on January 12 by a Russia-NATO meeting, then on January 13 by a meeting within the framework of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Last Friday, Joe Biden had already assured to have once again warned the Russian president against an attempted invasion of Ukraine during a telephone interview the day before: “I said clearly to President Putin that we would adopt severe sanctions and that we would increase our presence in Europe, among our NATO allies”. “We were clear: he cannot, I repeat, he cannot invade Ukraine”, insisted Mr. Biden.
It was the second telephone conversation between the two heads of state in three weeks, due to tensions around pro-Western Ukraine, with the mobilization of Russian troops on the eastern border of Ukraine.
“Defuse tensions in the Donbass”
This Sunday, the American leader also “Expressed its support for confidence-building measures to defuse tensions in the Donbass and for active diplomacy to advance the implementation of the Minsk agreements”, according to Jen Psaki. Under these agreements, concluded under the aegis of France and Germany, Ukraine has agreed to carry out political reforms and Russia to end its support for pro-Russian separatist rebels. Washington and its European allies accuse Moscow of threatening Ukraine with a new invasion, following that of Crimea in 2014, and of fomenting a pro-Russian separatist war that erupted that same year in the east. Some 100,000 Russian soldiers are massed near the country’s border.
For Moscow, Russia’s security requires the prohibition of any NATO enlargement, seen as an existential threat, and the end of Western military activities near Russian borders, an area it considers to fall within its area. influence.
According to the Kremlin, Mr. Putin said to himself ” satisfied “ of the exchange on Thursday, of about fifty minutes, while affirming that new sanctions against Moscow will constitute “A colossal error”.
For more than a month, Russia has been accused by the West of having massed tens of thousands of soldiers near the Ukrainian border, with a view to a possible military intervention against Kiev. But on December 25, Moscow announced that more than 10,000 Russian troops returned to their bases after month-long exercises in southern Russia, near the Ukrainian border.