Ukraine Live Updates: Putin Summons Russia’s National Security Officials

 

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/21/world/ukraine-russia-putin-biden

 

Ukraine Live Updates: Putin Summons Russia’s National Security Officials

 

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has called an unscheduled meeting of his Security Council, his spokesman said, while declining to confirm suggestions of potential for direct talks between Mr. Putin and President Biden.

 

France says Biden and Putin agree to meet in ‘principle,’ but obstacles remain.

 

Here’s what you need to know:

• Putin gathers his Security Council, with a warning of rising tensions.
• U.S. says Russia has a list of Ukrainians to kill or detain after an invasion.
• Satellite images show a new phase of Russian military readiness.
• Blitzkrieg or minor incursion? Putin’s choice could determine world’s reaction.
• At a pro-Ukraine rally, priests pray for the dead and diplomats hope for peace.
• Putin gathers his Security Council, with a warning of rising tensions.

 

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will hold an unscheduled meeting of his Security Council on Monday, the Kremlin said, declaring that “tensions are rising” as the warnings from the United States that his nation stands poised to attack Ukraine, swiftly and without provocation, grow more dire by the day.

 

Mr. Putin held a second call with President Emmanuel Macron of France at 1 a.m. Moscow time on Monday morning, after speaking with the French leader on Sunday, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters.

 

Mr. Macron proposed a summit between President Biden and Mr. Putin, the French presidency said, but Mr. Peskov did not confirm that preparations for such a meeting had begun.

 

“It’s clear that tensions are rising,” Mr. Peskov said. “It’s too early to talk about concrete plans for organizing any summits.”

 

At Monday’s extraordinary meeting of the Security Council, Mr. Putin would deliver a speech, Mr. Peskov said. He did not specify what the speech would be about.

 

The meeting came a day after the latest round of high-stakes diplomacy by Mr. Macron, which had appeared to give some new hope for a peaceful resolution over Ukraine as White House officials said Mr. Biden would be willing to consider direct talks with his Russian counterpart as long as Russia did not invade.

 

While not confirming plans for a summit, Mr. Peskov noted that Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov was planning to meet with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken this week, and that he may speak to his French counterpart as well.

 

White House officials said a possible summit between Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin would only be held after meetings between the top diplomats of the two countries, which are tentatively scheduled for later this week

 

One senior White House official said there were no plans for either the format or timing of a meeting between the two leaders. Another official called it all completely notional, and said that all evidence suggests Russia still intends to invade Ukraine in the coming days. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

 

In a statement from the White House, Jen Psaki, the press secretary, said that Mr. Biden had accepted the idea of talks with Mr. Putin “in principle” and said that the United States remains committed to pursuing diplomacy “until the moment an invasion begins.”

 

“We are also ready to impose swift and severe consequences should Russia instead choose war,” she wrote in the statement. “And currently, Russia appears to be continuing preparations for a full-scale assault on Ukraine very soon.”

 

Mr. Putin said last week that Ukrainian forces were carrying out a “genocide” of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, a false claim that Western officials see as an attempt to build a case for a military intervention. Russian state television aired unfounded claims that Ukraine was preparing an offensive against the Russian-backed separatist territories in the country’s east, and showed residents fleeing to Russia, noting that “children are especially suffering.”

 

“Everything is very serious,” the state television host Dmitri Kiselyov said on his weekly news show Sunday evening. “Ukraine is literally being dragged into war with Russia.”

 

On Monday, the din of impending war grew even louder, as Russian news media broadcast separatist claims of an escalating assault by Ukrainian forces. Ukraine had shelled communications, bridges, a water filtration station and other critical infrastructure targets, and had sent saboteurs behind separatist lines, Russian state television reported from the separatist-held city of Donetsk.

 

Russian television showed the wreckage of a green-walled shack, describing it as a Russian border guard post hit by a Ukrainian shell. A Russian state television reporter said the Ukrainian aggression was being supported by NATO surveillance planes.

 

The separatists now needed military assistance from Russia, a separatist spokesman said in an interview with a Russian journalist on YouTube, according the Interfax news agency.

 

Ukrainian officials insisted their military was not preparing an assault against the separatist republic, and said the separatists were shelling their own territory.

 

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Russia was using “the Russian propaganda machine to wage information warfare, to falsely accuse the Armed Forces of Ukraine and to further escalate the situation.”

 

“I emphasize once again that the Ukrainian army is not planning any offensive actions. Nowhere,” Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, said at a news conference on Monday. “We stand for the return of our people and territories through political and diplomatic means.”

 

— Anton Troianovski

 

France says Biden and Putin agree to meet in ‘principle,’ but obstacles remain.

 

PARIS — President Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have “accepted the principle” of a summit meeting to be held some time after Thursday, the French presidency said in a statement on Monday.

 

The meeting, “to be held on the condition that Russia does not invade Ukraine,” would address “security and strategic stability in Europe.” The groundwork for a summit would be prepared in a meeting on Thursday between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, the statement said.

 

The French statement offered hope that Mr. Putin has decided against an invasion, at least for now. However, U.S. officials are far from certain that Thursday’s meeting between the nations’ top diplomats will happen, and Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said on Monday that it was “too early to talk about concrete plans for organizing any summits.”

 

Mr. Biden said on Friday that Russian forces intended to attack Ukraine within days, and that U.S. officials believed the target would be the capital, Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million people.

 

President Emmanuel Macron of France has been consistently more cautious on the possibility of an invasion and has pressed for dialogue with Russia, which Mr. Macron views as a European power that needs to be integrated into a new security arrangement for the continent that reflects the Cold War’s end.

 

The agreement on the principle of a meeting followed two calls by Mr. Macron to Mr. Putin on Sunday, and one to Mr. Biden. Mr. Macron has been the chief European interlocutor with Mr. Putin, having begun a dialogue with him in 2019, the same year the French leader alarmed allies by saying NATO was suffering from a “brain death.”

 

Officials close to Mr. Macron said he had worked to get the American and Russian leaders to agree on the principle of holding a meeting, and that the agreement indicated they both believed in the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the crisis precipitated by the buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border. But the officials said that the scope and the content of the meeting still needed to be worked out.

 

Mr. Macron faces a presidential election on April 10 for which he has not yet formally declared himself a candidate, choosing to dedicate himself to shuttle diplomacy in the Ukraine crisis — an undertaking that seems certain to enhance his stature if he is able to avert war.

 

— Roger Cohen