Ukraine prez to Vlad: Talk to me

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s leader has asked for a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the Russian troop buildup across his country’s border and the escalating tensions in eastern Ukraine, but the request has not been answered so far, his spokeswoman said Monday.

The concentration of Russian troops along the frontier comes amid a surge of ceasefire 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. More than 14,000 people have died in fighting in eastern Ukraine, and efforts to negotiate a political settlement have stalled.

“The Kremlin, of course, has the request to talk to Vladimir Putin. We haven’t received a response so far and very much hope that it’s not a refusal of dialogue,” Iuliia Mendel, a spokeswoman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told The Associated Press. The request was lodged March 26, when four Ukrainian troops were killed in a mortar attack in the east, she added.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he hasn’t seen any requests from Zelenskyy “in recent days.”

Western and Ukrainian officials have raised concerns about increasingly frequent ceasefire violations in the conflict area.