The Kremlin deemed Monday “premature” the holding of a summit between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, dampening the hopes raised by the French announcement the day before on such a meeting aimed at defusing the danger of a Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
Announced in the night from Sunday to Monday by the French presidency, the agreement in principle on such a summit aimed to bring down the tensions at their height around Ukraine, the fighting in the east of the country between the army and pro-Russian separatists have worsened in the past three days.
Russia is accused of having massed around 150,000 troops on the Ukrainian borders in preparation for an invasion that the West has presented for weeks as imminent. The fear is that Moscow could use an escalation in eastern Ukraine to invade its pro-Western neighbour.
“There is an agreement on the fact of having to continue the dialogue at the level of ministers (of Foreign Affairs). Talking about concrete plans for organizing summits is premature,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
According to Mr. Peskov, a meeting is possible if MM. Putin and Biden consider it “useful”, but the latter can always talk to each other “on the phone or in another way”.
After a day of telephone diplomacy by Emmanuel Macron, the French presidency announced overnight from Sunday to Monday that MM. Biden and Putin had each “accepted the principle of such a summit”, specifying that these talks would then be extended to “all stakeholders” in the Ukrainian crisis.
The French president spoke twice to the Russian president on Sunday and once with the American leader.
A meeting of the heads of Russian and American diplomats, Sergei Lavrov and Antony Blinken, is also scheduled for Thursday.
Both Paris and Washington have also insisted that a summit could only be held if Russia does not invade Ukraine. However, according to the West, the current fighting in the East could serve as a pretext for Moscow to attack its neighbor.
Vladimir Putin is due to chair a midday meeting of his Security Council on Monday, a powerful body that brings together the main Russian decision-makers, in particular the leaders of the army and the intelligence services.
“Tense” situation on the front
On the ground Monday in eastern Ukraine, clashes continued, with Kyiv reporting 14 shellings by pro-Russian rebels, which injured one soldier.
The separatists reported the death of three civilians in the shelling over the past 24 hours, as well as the explosion of an ammunition depot in the Novoazovsk region, accusing “Ukrainian saboteurs” of being responsible.
However, this information could not be independently verified.
The authorities of the two self-proclaimed pro-Russian “republics” in eastern Ukraine have ordered the mobilization of able-bodied men and the evacuation of civilians to Russia. Moscow reported on Monday that 61,000 people had been evacuated from the area.
“They bombard us, scare the children. They fly over us […] we heard things flying, knocking, exploding, lighting up,” one of the evacuees, Lioudmila Kliouiko, a 56-year-old retiree, told AFP on her arrival in Taganrog, Russia.
The Kremlin stressed once again on Monday that the “situation remains extremely tense” on the Ukrainian eastern front, saying it was “worried”.
Moscow and Kiev accused each other on Sunday of being responsible for this outbreak of violence in a conflict that has claimed more than 14,000 lives since its outbreak in 2014, in the wake of the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea by Russia.
Vladimir Putin, like his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, called for the intensification of diplomatic efforts with a view to restoring a ceasefire.
Moscow denies any plan to invade Ukraine but demands the promise that the country will never join NATO and an end to the expansion of the Alliance on its borders, all demands rejected by the West.
The West has threatened Moscow with devastating sanctions in the event of an offensive against Ukraine.
“We are ready to inflict swift and severe consequences if Russia chooses war instead” of diplomacy, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki warned again on Sunday. “And currently, Russia appears to be continuing its preparations for a full-scale attack on Ukraine.”