The spokesperson for the US State Department refers to the United States’ concern about the deployment of Russian soldiers in Belarus and the Ukrainian border, and Blinken is preparing to visit Germany to participate in the Munich Security Conference.
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US State Department: Blinken is ready to meet Lavrov at any time
US State Department spokesman Ned Price confirmed that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is ready to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, at any time.
“If the Russians are serious about diplomacy and dialogue, we are ready and willing to engage in these discussions and in the course of diplomacy,” Price said.
Price continued, “We believe that More Russian forces are being mobilized on the border with UkraineAnd this is the source of our concern,” he said, noting that there are more than 150,000 Russian soldiers around the Ukrainian borders and in Belarus, and this is a huge and huge number,” as he put it.
He pointed out that “the Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely to happen at any time for his country,” accusing Russia of “launching misleading campaigns to cover up the possibility of its attack on Ukraine.”
On the situation in Donbass, Price said that “the allegations of Ukrainian military attacks on the Donbass region are false.”
He pointed out that “his country has not yet received any response from Russia regarding the letter of security guarantees that was presented to Moscow,” noting that “in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US’s security and defense support for the latter will accelerate.”
“The State Department has formed a task force on Ukraine in recent days,” Price said, describing it as a “big”, and this team in the State Department works to coordinate the response to high-level cases, which are often crises.
In this context, the US State Department announced that Secretary Blinken will travel to Germany from February 17-20, to attend the Munich Security Conference.
On the sidelines of the conference, the US State Department stated that “Blinken will have the opportunity to coordinate ongoing efforts with allies and partners to urge Russia to de-escalate and choose the path of diplomacy.”
Blinken will reaffirm support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and will hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts to advance European security and other global challenges.
It is noteworthy that Blinken had had a phone call with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry stated after the call that Lavrov informed his counterpart that “the aggressive rhetoric pursued by the United States and its closest allies on the issue of The Ukrainian crisis is unacceptable“.
“Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that the propaganda campaign waged by the United States and its allies regarding Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is for provocative goalsIt encourages the authorities in Kiev to sabotage the Minsk agreements, and harmful attempts to solve the Donbass problem by imposing force.”
The statement added, “The Russian Foreign Minister indicated that the reaction of the United States and the European Union to the draft Russian-American treaty and the agreement with NATO, on the security guarantees that we provided, ignores the main provisions for us, primarily about the non-expansion of the Alliance and the non-deployment of offensive weapons systems near from the Russian border.