‘De-escalate’ in tense Ukraine, Biden urges Putin

BRUSSELS — President Joe Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to “de-escalate tensions” after a Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s border in their second tense call of Biden’s young presidency.

Biden also told Putin the U.S. would “act firmly in defense of its national interests” regarding Russian cyber intrusions and election interference, according to the White House. Biden proposed a summit in a third country “in the coming months” to discuss the full range of U.S.-Russia issues, the White House said.

The Biden-Putin relationship has been rocky in the early going of the new U.S. administration. Biden is weighing action against Russia for the SolarWinds hacking campaign, Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election, reports of Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and the poisoning and jailing of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

There is growing concern in the West about a surge of cease-fire violations in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces have been locked in a conflict since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Biden’s call with Putin came as the top U.S. diplomat and the leader of NATO condemned the recent massing of thousands of Russian troops.

“President Biden emphasized the United States’ unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the White House said in a statement. The White House added that Biden made clear that Russia must “de-escalate tensions.”

The Kremlin in a statement said “during an exchange of opinions on Ukraine’s internal political crisis,” Putin told Biden about “approaches to a political settlement” based on the 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany and signed in Minsk, Belarus.

The White House provided no details on the timing or location of Biden’s proposed summit.

Shortly after talking to Biden, Putin called Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, according to the Kremlin.

Finland was the venue for several meetings of Russian and U.S. leaders. It hosted a summit between Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford in 1975, a meeting of Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush in 1990, talks between Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton in 1997, and, most recently, a summit between Donald Trump and Putin in July 2018.

Austria also is ready to serve as a summit venue, according to a spokesperson for the Austrian Foreign Ministry quoted by Russian news agencies.

Putin has repeatedly brushed off calls by U.S. officials to cease provocations on Ukraine’s border and on other issues. Still, the White House said that talks can be useful.

Leonid Slutsky, a senior Russian lawmaker and chairman the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of parliament, said Biden’s call marked “a step away from confrontation to dialogue.”

“Such a position meets not only mutual interests, but also the interests of international security,” Slutsky said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies. “The good news is that the leaders of the two largest nuclear powers have confirmed their readiness for interaction on issues of strategic stability and arms control.”

Although Biden agreed to extend a major arms control deal with Russia, he has been notably cool toward Moscow and highly critical of many of its activities.

Last month in an interview with ABC News, Biden agreed with the description of Putin as a “killer” and he has criticized the jailing of Navalny, the opposition figure.