Competing mediation offers have showered down on Vladimir Putin, as his defence minister visits troops on the Ukraine border before unprecedented joint exercises with Belarus, due to start in a week’s time.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on a trip to Kyiv, offered to host talks between Ukraine and Russia. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, prepared a fourth phone call in a week with Putin, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he was planning a trip to Moscow.
Russia confirmed it was possible that Scholz and Macron would travel to Moscow together, as a symbol of European unity and as joint signatories to the Minsk agreements, the stalled 2015 deal designed to bring peace and autonomy to Russian-supporting eastern Ukraine.
Macron is de facto becoming the chief interlocutor for the Russian president in Europe, coordinating closely with Washington and Warsaw.
The frenetic diplomatic activity on Thursday came as Russia accused the US of ratcheting up “tensions” by sending 1,000 soldiers to Romania and 2,000 to Poland to bolster Nato’s eastern flank. Moscow is refusing to pull back more than 100,000 troops from Ukraine’s borders, and said its security demands had not yet been addressed by Nato.
Competing mediation offers have showered down on Vladimir Putin, as his defence minister visits troops on the Ukraine border before unprecedented joint exercises with Belarus, due to start in a week’s time.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on a trip to Kyiv, offered to host talks between Ukraine and Russia. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, prepared a fourth phone call in a week with Putin, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he was planning a trip to Moscow.
Russia confirmed it was possible that Scholz and Macron would travel to Moscow together, as a symbol of European unity and as joint signatories to the Minsk agreements, the stalled 2015 deal designed to bring peace and autonomy to Russian-supporting eastern Ukraine.
Macron is de facto becoming the chief interlocutor for the Russian president in Europe, coordinating closely with Washington and Warsaw.
The frenetic diplomatic activity on Thursday came as Russia accused the US of ratcheting up “tensions” by sending 1,000 soldiers to Romania and 2,000 to Poland to bolster Nato’s eastern flank. Moscow is refusing to pull back more than 100,000 troops from Ukraine’s borders, and said its security demands had not yet been addressed by Nato.
