- US President Joe Biden has threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with sanctions if Russia allows the situation on the border with Ukraine to escalate.
- Biden said this to his Russian counterpart in a telephone conversation, news agencies report, citing the Kremlin and the White House.
- The US and its allies would not tolerate an invasion of Ukraine. Putin, on the other hand, said that sanctions against Russia would be a big mistake. The conversation lasted around 50 minutes.
According to US government officials, the phone call began around 9:35 p.m. CET and ended 50 minutes later, i.e. in the afternoon in the USA and around midnight in Moscow. The Ukraine conflict was right at the top of the agenda.
Hardened fronts
According to the White House, Russia made it clear in advance that it would like a written promise that Ukraine may never join NATO and that the military equipment of the alliance will not be stationed in the former Soviet states. These are demands that the Biden government does not want to comply with.
In the run-up to the conversation, the White House announced that Biden would tell Putin that a diplomatic path would remain open, even if the Russians have relocated an estimated 100,000 soldiers to Ukraine and Kremlin officials are louder in their calls for new guarantees from the USA and NATO be left.
Legend:
The two heads of state last spoke to each other at the beginning of December.
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These demands are due to be discussed in talks between senior officials from the two sides in Geneva on January 10, but it remains unclear what, if anything, Biden would offer Putin in return for defusing the crisis.