LUS President Joe Biden assured his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that the United States and its allies will respond “vigorously” if Russia invades Ukraine. In a phone call on Sunday, January 2, the US head of state also underscored Washington’s commitment “to the principle of ‘nothing about you without you'”, apparently referring to the need to include the ‘Ukraine in the negotiations on its own future.
“We appreciate the unwavering support for Ukraine (from the United States),” Volodymyr Zelensky responded on Twitter. “We spoke of the joint actions of Ukraine, the United States and its partners to maintain peace in Europe and prevent the situation from worsening.” 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 OSCE.
WH readout of Biden-Zelensky call: “President Biden made clear that the United States and its allies and partners will respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine” pic.twitter.com/xmwf9VLwIv
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) January 2, 2022
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A risk of “severe” sanctions
Last Friday, Joe Biden had already assured to have again warned the Russian president against an attempted invasion of Ukraine during a telephone interview the day before. “I clearly said to President Putin that we would adopt severe sanctions and that we would increase our presence in Europe, among our NATO allies,” he said, repeating that the Russian president “cannot invade the country. ‘Ukraine’. 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 Ukraine’s eastern border.
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 expansion, perceived as an existential threat, and the end of Western military activities near Russian borders, an area it considers to fall within its area. influence.