Biden WON’T accept Zelensky’s invite to go to Ukraine amid Russia standoff

Joe Biden will not visit Ukraine anytime soon despite President Volodymyr’s Zelensky’s request for the U.S. president to visit amid looming threat of war from Russia, according to a new report.

A senior Ukrainian official told CNN in a Monday report that Zelensky asked Biden to visit Ukraine, but U.S. officials claim a trip is ‘highly unlikely.’

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in Kyiv for crisis talks with Zelensky on Monday and will also fly to Russia for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin this week to try and avert war.

Scholz traveled to the U.S earlier this month and met with Biden.

President Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will also brief lawmakers on Monday. The Senate is in so their briefing will be classified, but the meeting with House members, who are out of town, will be unclassified.

Zelensky is renewing his calls for Washington to provide even greater military and financial support to Kyiv after hundreds of millions of dollars in tons of U.S. military aid and defense equipment landed in Ukraine over the last two months.

The latest shipment arrived on Sunday at the Boryspil International Airport outside Kyiv.

Biden and Zelensky held a roughly one-hour phone call on Sunday where the U.S. promised ‘swift and decisive’ action if Russia takes more steps toward invasion.

On Sunday night, Ukraine called for a meeting with Russia and members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) within the next 48 hours to discuss Russia’s military build-up.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Moscow had not responded after Kyiv invoked a part of the Vienna Document, a set of security agreements, to demand Moscow explain its military activities.

‘Consequently, we take the next step. We request a meeting with Russia and all participating states within 48 hours to discuss its reinforcement & redeployment along our border & in temporarily occupied Crimea,’ Kuleba tweeted.

‘If Russia is serious when it talks about the indivisibility of security in the OSCE space, it must fulfill its commitment to military transparency in order to de-escalate tensions and enhance security for all,’ he said.

As President Vladimir Putin continues to position and amass troops at the border with Ukraine, Russian state TV began a propaganda push, claiming Ukrainian nationalists are about to massacre Russians in the country’s east.

Observers fear this may be the final step in Putin justifying an invasion after U.S. intelligence this month already warned against the Kremlin creating fabricated video propaganda depicting a genocide of Russian-speakers. 

Dmitry Kiselyov, a prominent state propagandist often known as ‘Putin’s mouthpiece’, used his Sunday news show to peddle unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine has ‘tortured and savagely killed’ thousands of civilians in the Donbass region.  

In a segment entitled ‘they are preparing to kill’, he also featured an interview with a separatist fighter in the region warning that Ukrainian nationalists have threatened to ‘kill and butcher you all, and hang your children on wires’. 

The tactic mirrors Russian propaganda spread ahead of the last invasion of Ukraine, in 2014, which was used by the Kremlin to justify military action on the basis of ‘protecting’ ethnic Russians living in the country.

There are now thought to be 148,000 Russian troops massed on the borders – backed by thousands of tanks and artillery pieces – with Washington warning an invasion may come as soon as Wednesday. 

Diplomatic efforts to head off a war are continuing, with Scholz’s visit to Kyiv and Moscow. He is expected to offer more financial assistance to Ukraine and to demand Russia ‘immediately deescalate’ its troop build-up on the border. 

Talks have so-far met with little success as Moscow demands Ukraine is banned from joining NATO, and the alliance refuses. Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK appeared to suggest that Kiev’s stance could be softened, which Russia pounced on as a positive step, before he was forced to walk back his remarks. 

A new report reveals, however, that Russia could still be open to a diplomatic path, rather than a military one, despite warnings of invasion in the coming days.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov advised Putin to continue talks with the West on Moscow’s security demands, according to PA Media.

Lavrov suggested during a meeting with Putin that the Kremlin should maintain a dialogue with the U.S. and its allies even though they have so far rejected Russia’s main security demands – including barring Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance.

Moscow also wants guarantees from NATO that the alliance will halt weapons deployments to Ukraine and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe.

Lavrov noted that even though the U.S. and its allies have flatly rejected those demands, Washington has offered to conduct dialogue on limits for missile deployments in Europe, restrictions on military drills and other confidence-building measures.

Putin has yet to formulate Russia’s formal response to those proposals, but he did ask Lavrov if it made sense to continue diplomatic efforts. Lavrov responded that possibilities for talks ‘are far from being exhausted’ and proposed to continue the negotiations

‘[Talks] can’t go on indefinitely, but I would suggest to continue and expand them at this stage,’ Lavrov said. 

Amid one of the most serious standoffs between East and West since the Cold War, a Russian military chief warned the navy stands ready to fire on any foreign vessels entering the country’s territorial waters.  

Stanislav Gadzhimagomedov issued the threat Monday, two days after Moscow complained that an American submarine had entered its waters near the Kuril Islands in the far eastern Pacific.

The Kremlin said the submarine repeatedly ignored warnings to leave before turning around after ‘appropriate measures’ were used.

Gadzhimagomedov was asked whether Russia’s navy stands ready to fire upon such vessels and said that it does, though the call would need to be made ‘at the highest level.’  

Russia has latched on to those warnings to accuse the US and ally Britain of issuing their own propaganda aimed at ‘illegally inciting war in Ukraine’. 

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday: ‘What we are currently witnessing is pure war propaganda.

‘Aggressive rhetoric is providing cover for arms deliveries to Ukraine, the deployment of military instructors there, the holding of Nato military exercises near Russia’s borders, and the creation by Western states of offensive combined-arms infrastructure.’

She claimed: ‘What the US and Britain are now doing is classical war propaganda.’

Such activities were banned by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966, she said.

The Covenant was passed at the height of the Cold War with the aim ‘not only of protecting human rights, but of leading humanity away from the abyss towards which the military rhetoric of Nato countries had pushed it in those years’, she said.

‘The Soviet Union (and later Russia) and dozens of other states across the whole world, understanding the extreme danger which war propaganda may constitute, voluntarily reject this threatening practice.

‘But neither Washington nor London deprives itself of the opportunity to hold a match to a haystack…

‘The US and UK have taken from their back pockets a tool which they’ve been keeping safe for a good half-century.

‘And now they are waving it around like a truncheon, sustaining this managed hysteria through the CNN and Bloomberg media holdings and the British tabloids, influencing public opinion in their countries.’

Russia has consistently denied having any plans to attack, but continues to move additional hardware into border zones and has kept up with sabre-rattling military drills that appear aimed at intimidating its neighbour. 

On Sunday, images revealed that Putin has moved attack helicopters to the border – a significant step as aerial power was one of the last capabilities his forces were lacking in the event an invasion does go ahead.

The Russian military also released new images and videos of tank drills taking place in the Leningrad region, near the Baltic Sea.  

Military equipment was also captured on the move in Kursk, Belgorod, and Voronezh regions as well as in Liptsek and Saratov in social media posts.

Russian and Belarusian Su-30SMs also staged joint patrols over Belarus. 

A fresh round of diplomatic talks between European leaders aimed at heading off an attack are also taking place this week, though there appears little room for progress. 

Putin is continuing to demand that Ukraine be banned from ever joining NATO and that it withdraw forces from ex-Soviet states – something the alliance has categorically ruled out.

America and NATO have instead outlined a number of other areas – including arms control treaties – where they are willing to negotiate, though these were dismissed by the Kremlin as secondary concerns.

Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, had suggested early Monday that the country could be ‘flexible’ over its goal of joining NATO if it meant avoiding a bloody conflict.

But his remark was quickly shot down by Sergii Nykyforov – spokesman for President Volodymyr Zelensky – who said joining the alliance remains the government’s ‘absolute priority’. 

‘This course is not only reflected in the Constitution, but is also the full consent of the authorities and society,’ Mr Nykyforov told Reuters.

‘Mr. Ambassador used the word ‘flexibility’. I think it’s worth giving him the opportunity to explain what exactly he had in mind’.

Boris Johnson is preparing for a whistle-stop tour of Europe this week as he leads efforts to avert a conflict and to reassure other western allies in eastern Europe that they will not be at risk if Putin attacks.

While the Prime Minister’s itinerary has not been made clear, it is thought he will head to Nordic and Baltic countries.

Though the Baltics are located hundreds of miles from Ukraine, the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have long feared that Putin may also attack them in an effort to bring them back under his control.

Any invasion of Ukraine would heighten those fears further, and almost certainly lead to calls for NATO to send more military hardware to the region.

All three nations are members of the alliance and as-such are protected by the mutual defence pledge which states that an attack on any one member will be considered an attack on all. 

Elsewhere German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has come under fire for his soft-touch stance towards Russia, headed to Kiev today before a meeting in Moscow aimed at heading off war.

Scholz is expected to discuss offering more financial support to Ukraine to help in the event of an invasion, sources said, but is not expected to offer military aid.

That is despite Germany deploying some 70 troops to Lithuania today, which is part of a ramp-up of forces in the region – which is close to Russia.

The German chancellor’s visits will thus be closely watched for a signs he is deviating from the message delivered by Washington and other NATO allies.

Moscow’s reaction to his visit will also be scrutinised after the Kremlin used similar visits by other foreign leaders to heap scorn and humiliation on them.

Liz Truss visited Moscow last week where she met with Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov, who likened talking with her to speaking with a ‘deaf person’ during a joint press conference afterwards.

Lavrov accused her of failing to mention bilateral relations during the summit, and sources say she was fed several ‘gotcha’ questions designed to show up a lack of geographical knowledge during the ’embarrassing’ summit.

French President Emmanuel Macron also visited Moscow last week, and came away enthused about guarantees he claimed to have secured from Putin.

Elysee officials even went so far as to suggest that Macron had managed to get Putin to agree to end military drills near the border, before the Kremlin rubbished the claim.

Since then, tens of thousands of new troops along with warships and attack helicopters have been moved into the region, with drills taking place virtually every day. 

Defence minister James Heappey said the build-up of Russian forces on the border means that Vladimir Putin can give an order and missiles and bombs would be hitting targets within ‘minutes’.

In a round of interviews as tension ramps up, Mr Heappey insisted it was still possible to avoid a flashpoint but ‘we are closer than we’ve been on this continent’ to war ‘for 70 years’.

The grim assessment came as Boris Johnson prepares to launch a fresh diplomatic blitz with a whistle-stop tour of Europe, warning that situation is at ‘a critical juncture’.

Meanwhile, Tories have urged the West to stand firm comparing the standoff with Moscow to the Cuban Missile Crisis – amid calls for Russian banks to be frozen out of financial markets.

Britain yesterday pledged ‘further economic support to Ukraine’ as more than 130,000 Russian troops stood massed at its borders.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace will attend a meeting with his Nato counterparts in Brussels this week to prepare the security alliance’s response to any attack on Ukrainian sovereignty.

Oil prices climbed to fresh seven-year highs amid concerns that sanctions would disrupt exports from Russia, a major oil producer, in an already tight market. 

The dollar hit a two-week high as investors sought a safe haven. Russian and Ukrainian bond pieces fell sharply.

Sanctions could rebound on Western powers, which rely heavily on Russia for energy supplies, notably gas, as well as other raw materials.

European banks in particular fear that Russia could be excluded from the SWIFT global payment system, which would prevent the repayment of Russian debts.

U.S. aircraft maker Boeing Co buys much of its titanium for airframes from Russia’s VSMPO-AVISMA – but said it was confident that other suppliers would enable it to work through any supply chain disruption. 

Scholz may receive a cool reception in Kyiv, which has long resented the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 project – a pipeline that will allow Russia to circumvent Ukraine for its gas exports to Germany – and has bristled at Germany’s refusal to join other NATO partners in selling it weapons. 

The Kremlin said it expected Putin’s talks with Scholz on Tuesday to address Ukraine, security guarantees for Russia, and Nord Stream 2, which is awaiting European Union approval.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that an invasion could begin ‘any day now’, but U.S. officials said they could not confirm reports that U.S. intelligence indicated it would start on Wednesday.

Sullivan said the United States would also ‘defend every inch of NATO territory … and Russia, we think, fully understands that message’. 

Biden told Putin in a phone call on Saturday that any attack would harm and isolate Moscow. 

As tensions continue to build, airlines have started cancelling flights to Ukraine with others saying that are ‘closely’ following the situation there.

Dutch carrier KLM has cancelled all flights to and from the country, while Germany’s Lufthansa said flights will continue for now but are being kept under review.

The Netherlands is particularly sensitive to the risks of flights over potential war zones after the shoot-down of MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The Malaysia Airlines flight was heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-backed separatists who mistook it for a Ukrainian aircraft.

All 298 people on board were killed, two thirds of whom were Dutch.