BIDEN ASSURES UKRAINE’S LEADER OF U.S. SUPPORT TO DETER RUSSIA
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden reached out to Ukraine’s leader Thursday as the United States moved to take a more direct role in diplomacy between that country and Russia, part of a broader effort to dissuade Russia from a destabilizing invasion of its western neighbor.
But any negotiations to peacefully resolve Europe’s tangled East-West rivalries will present minefields for the U.S. president.
Biden made his offer of American diplomacy during a two-hour online session with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Biden proposed joining the Europeans in negotiations not just to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine but to address Putin’s larger strategic objections to NATO expanding its membership and building military capacity ever closer to Russia’s borders.
Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by phone for more than an hour Thursday. Biden assured Zelenskyy of support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. He also renewed a pledge that the U.S. and its allies would hit Russia with economic sanctions and intensify defensive aid to Ukraine and NATO allies nearest to Russia if Russia did invade, the White House said.
The two called on Putin to calm the crisis and urged diplomacy. Biden said the U.S. was prepared to help with “confidence-building measures” to implement a 2015 peace deal.
In a statement after the call with Biden, Ukraine said Zelenskyy was offering “clear proposals to unblock the peace process and is ready to discuss them in various formats.”
Administration officials have suggested that the U.S. will press Ukraine to formally cede a measure of autonomy within its eastern Donbas region, which is now under de facto control by Russia-backed separatists who rose up against Kyiv in 2014.
Decentralization of Ukraine and a “special status” for Donbas were laid out in an ambiguous, European-brokered peace deal in 2015, but it has never taken hold.
More autonomy could formally give residents of that region more authority over some local issues.
Biden also will have to finesse Ukraine’s desire to join NATO. The U.S. and NATO reject Putin’s demands that they guarantee Ukraine won’t be admitted to the Western military alliance.
But senior State Department officials have told Ukraine that NATO membership is unlikely to be approved in the next decade, according to a person familiar with those private talks who spoke on condition of anonymity.