Live: Biden to speak to Ukraine’s Zelensky amid diplomatic efforts to defuse crisis

Military jets fly over the Gozhsky training ground during Russia-Belarus military drills in Belarus.
Military jets fly over the Gozhsky training ground during Russia-Belarus military drills in Belarus. © Vadzim Yakubionak, AP
qatar airways

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is set to speak to US President Joe Biden later Sunday as fears of a Russian invasion sparked a frenzy of telephone diplomacy. Follow our live updates below.

  • 4:23 Paris time

Ukraine advises airlines to avoid routes over Black Sea due to Russian naval drills

Ukraine on Sunday advised airlines to avoid flying over the open waters of the Black Sea from Monday to Saturday due to Russian naval exercises taking place there.

More than 30 Russian ships have started training exercises near the Crimea peninsula as part of wider navy drills, RIA news agency reported on Saturday.

“From tomorrow, airlines are advised not to fly … over this area, and to plan optimal routes in advance, taking into account the current situation,” Ukraine’s state air traffic service said.

It said the airspace over the territory of Ukraine remained open.

A senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday that Ukraine sees no point closing its airspace in response to Moscow’s troop buildup near its border, as Dutch airline KLM – part of Air France – said it would stop flying to Ukraine and Germany’s Lufthansa said it was considering suspending flights.

  • 3:52pm Paris time

Zelensky to speak to Biden ‘in coming hours’

Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky is set to speak to US President Joe Biden “in the coming hours”, said Zelensky’s press secretary Sergiy Nikiforov.

“In the coming hours, President Volodymyr Zelensky will discuss the security situation and current diplomatic efforts to de-escalate with US President Joe Biden,” Nikiforov announced on Facebook.

The latest telephone conversation comes a day after the White House reported there had been no breakthrough during a one-hour phone conversation between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  • 3:12pm Paris time

White House adviser says US to keep sharing intelligence on Russia’s Ukraine actions

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that a Russian invasion could begin any day and the United States will continue to share intelligence with the world to deny Moscow the ability to stage a surprise “false flag” operation to launch an attack.

Sullivan, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” programme, declined to say whether US intelligence agencies believe that Russia is considering an attack on Wednesday, as some reports suggest.

“We cannot perfectly predict the day, but we have now been saying for some time that we are in the window, and an invasion could begin – a major military action could begin – by Russia in Ukraine any day now. That includes this coming week before the end of the Olympics,” Sullivan said.

  • 2:50pm Paris time

Ukraine says its airspace remains open despite tensions over Russian troop buildup

Ukraine sees no point closing its airspace in response to Moscow’s troop buildup, a senior official said on Sunday, as some carriers reviewed their services to the country after the United States warned that Russia could invade at any time.

Dutch airline KLM – part of Air France – said it would stop flying to Ukraine and Germany’s Lufthansa said it was considering suspending flights, as a local newspaper, Ukrayinska Pravda, said in an unconfirmed report that the government might discuss the air traffic issue on Sunday.

Two thirds of the 298 passengers killed when Malaysia Airlines MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were Dutch citizens.

Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry said airlines were continuing to operate “without any restrictions”.

It also said it was ready to provide additional financial guarantees to support local airlines, many of which use leased planes, after one Ukrainian carrier, SkyUp, said it had to divert a flight after the plane’s owner barred it from entering Ukrainian airspace.

  • 1:54pm Paris time

Germany’s vice chancellor says Europe may be on the verge of war

Germany’s vice chancellor and economics minister, Robert Habeck, said on Sunday that Europe may be on the verge of war.

Speaking in an interview with broadcaster RTL/NTV, Habeck, without elaborating, pointed to large armed forces facing each other.

“We may be on the verge of war in Europe,” he said.

“It is absolutely oppressive and threatening,” he added.

  • 1:40pm Paris time

Germany’s Scholz threatens ‘heavy consequences’ if Russia invades

The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will tell President Vladimir Putin at a meeting this week that Russia willface “heavy consequences” if it attacks Ukraine but Berlin does not expect concrete results from the discussions, a government source said on Sunday.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz travels to Kyiv on Monday to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and to Moscow on Tuesday to meet Putin as part of diplomatic efforts to ease tensions.

“The chancellor will make clear that any attack on Ukraine will have heavy consequences … and that one should notunderestimate the unity between the European Union, United States and Britain,” the German government source said.

Scholz would tell Putin the troop buildup could “only be interpreted as a threat”, the source told a briefing with journalists, adding: “I do not expect concrete results but these direct talks are important.”

  • 1:30pm Paris time

Ukraine vows to keep airspace open despite Russia threat

Ukraine on Sunday vowed to keep its airspace open to international travel despite Western warnings that Russian troops conducting drills near its borders could invade at any point.

“The airspace over Ukraine remains open and the state is working on preempting risks for airlines,” Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry said a day after the Dutch carrier KLM became the first major airline to suspend flights to the former Soviet state.

  • 12:45pm Paris time

Pope leads crowds in prayer for peace

Pope Francis on Sunday led crowds in St. Peter’s Square in silent prayer for Ukraine, appealing to the consciences of politicians to seek peace.

“The news from Ukraine is very worrying,” said Francis, who has made many appeals for peace in Ukraine and last month led an international day of prayer for peace.

“I entrust every effort for peace to the intercession of the Virgin Mary and the consciences of responsible politicians,” he told thousands of people in the square for his weekly blessing and message.

“Let us pray in silence,” he said. The crowd went quiet for about half a minute.

  • 11:10am Paris time

Russia ‘doesn’t give a shit’ about sanctions risk, ambassador says

Moscow “doesn’t give a shit” about the risk of Western sanctions if it were to invade Ukraine, Russia’s outspoken ambassador to Sweden told a Swedish newspaper.

“Excuse my language, but we don’t give a shit about all their sanctions”, Viktor Tatarintsev told the Aftonbladet newspaper in an interview posted on its website late Saturday.

“We have already had so many sanctions and in that sense they’ve had a positive effect on our economy and agriculture,” said the veteran diplomat, who speaks fluent Swedish and has been posted to the Scandinavian country four times.

“We are more self-sufficient and have been able to increase our exports. We have no Italian or Swiss cheeses, but we’ve learned to make just as good Russian cheeses using Italian and Swiss recipes”, he said.

“New sanctions are nothing positive but not as bad as the West makes it sound”, he added.

Tatarintsev accused the West of not understanding the Russian mentality.

“The more the West pushes Russia, the stronger the Russian response will be,” he said.

  • 10:45am Paris time

UK Defence Secretary says ‘whiff of Munich’ in Russia standoff

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has compared Western diplomatic efforts to head off a Russian invasion of Ukraine to the appeasement of Nazi Germany ahead of World War II.

Wallace told the Sunday Times that Russian President Vladimir Putin could send his massed troops into Ukraine “at any time” and suggested unnamed Western countries were not being tough enough with Moscow.

“It may be that he [Putin] just switches off his tanks and we all go home but there is a whiff of Munich in the air from some in the West,” Wallace said.

The 1938 Munich Agreement handed Nazi Germany parts of Czechoslovakia in a failed bid to head off major conflict in Europe.

“The worrying thing is that despite the massive amount of increased diplomacy, that military build-up has continued. It has not paused, it has continued,” Wallace said.

  • 8:45am Paris time

For Ukrainians ‘things have suddenly got a lot more real’

“A third of civilians responded to one opinion poll saying they would be ready to take up arms against any invading Russian force,” FRANCE 24 correspondent Gulliver Cragg reported from Kyiv in the video below.

“In a lot of Ukrainians’ minds, things have suddenly got a lot more real, with the way these Western embassy workers are being evacuated and also the fact that several countries pulled their representatives out of the OSCE’s observation mission in Donbas where the war has been going on for eight years now in eastern Ukraine,” Cragg continued. “Those observers will not now be able to function properly, so that’s something that also worries Ukrainians a lot.”

‘Third of civilians’ say would take up arms against Russian invaders
02:44
  • 7:45am Paris time

US OSCE staff start pullout from Donetsk

US staff at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) started to withdraw by car from the rebel-held city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, a Reuters witness said.

  • 7:30am Paris time

Russia says warship chases US sub, Washington denies it

A Russian anti-submarine destroyer chased off a US submarine near the Kuril Islands, forcing it to leave the country’s territorial waters, Moscow said Saturday, amid rising tensions over Ukraine.The US military denied the account.

Russia’s defence ministry said that during planned military drills the Marshal Shaposhnikov destroyer had detected a US Navy Virginia-class submarine in Russian territorial waters near the Kuril Islands in the northern Pacific.

When the submarine ignored demands to surface, the crew of the frigate “used appropriate means” and the US submarine left at full speed, the ministry said, without providing further details.

The ministry said it had summoned the US defence attache in Moscow over the incident.

“In connection with the violation by the US Navy submarine of the state border of the Russian Federation, the defence attache at the US embassy in Moscow was summoned to the Russian defence ministry”, the defence ministry said.

The statement from the US military, however, said: “There is no truth to the Russian claims of our operations in their territorial waters.”

  • 7am Paris time

Biden warns Putin invading Ukraine would bring ‘severe costs’

“If Russia undertakes a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States together with our allies and partners will respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs on Russia,” Biden told Putin, according to the White House.

While the United States was prepared to engage in diplomacy, “we are equally prepared for other scenarios,” Biden said, as the two nations stare down one of the gravest crises in East-West relations since the Cold War.

The Biden-Putin talks were “professional and substantive,” lasting just over an hour, but they produced “no fundamental change” in dynamics, a senior US official told reporters.

  • 7am Paris time

Blinken says Ukraine embassy drawdown prudent

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday the risk of Russian military action in Ukraine is high and imminent enough to justify the departure of much of the staff at US embassy in Kyiv, which the State Department announced earlier.

“We ordered the departure of most of the Americans still at the US embassy in Kyiv. The risk of Russian military action is high enough and the threat is imminent enough that this is the prudent thing to do,” Blinken told a news conference in Honolulu.

Most embassy staff were ordered to leave Ukraine immediately due to the threat of an invasion by Russia, with the department saying it appeared increasingly likely that the situation headed towards “some kind of active conflict.”

This added to the State Department’s call earlier this week for US citizens to leave Ukraine immediately.

  • 7am Paris time

Australia evacuates final Ukraine embassy staff

Australia has directed all remaining embassy staff in Kyiv to evacuate, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Sunday, as Russia continued to build up troops on its border with Ukraine.

The evacuation follows similar announcements from the United States and Canada, and comes after a frenzy of telephone diplomacy failed to ease mounting regional tensions Saturday.

Morrison said Australia would shift its operations to Lviv, a city close to Ukraine’s border with Poland that is about 540 kilometres (336 miles) east of Kyiv.

He said the three remaining staff in Kyiv had been supporting “the many Australians [in Ukraine], many of whom are dual citizens”.

“The situation, as you are all hearing, is deteriorating, and is reaching a very dangerous stage,” he said.

While decrying “the autocratic, unilateral actions of Russia”, the prime minister also pivoted back to regional politics, criticising China for “remaining chillingly silent on Russian troops amassing on the Ukrainian border”.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and REUTERS)

LEAVE A REPLY