Russia-Ukraine Live Updates And Latest News On Border Crisis – The Washington Post

The president of the European Council on Sunday restated Brussels’s commitment to imposing new sanctions on Moscow if Russia moves ahead with an invasion, while also taking action to buoy financial assistance to Ukraine.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Charles Michel said the European Council plans to raise 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) for Ukraine and proposed to launch an international donors conference to protect the nation’s economic stability.

“One thing is certain: If there is further military aggression, we will react with massive sanctions,” he said. “The cost for Russia must be, and will be, severe.”

Then he added: “But let’s be frank, it will also be a cost for us, in Europe.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded stronger action from world leaders as the threat of an attack by Russia remains. He urged Western leaders Saturday to state publicly their plans for sanctions on Russia, saying that after a war begins, such declarations would be too late.

The European Council represents the governments of European Union member nations.

Michel’s remarks follow those of other European leaders and political groups in the European Parliament that condemned Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine, and as European diplomats carry out efforts at the Munich Security Conference to try to ease tensions.

Michel said Moscow’s efforts to sow division among European nations and across the world have created the opposite effect.

“They hoped to sow division, to weaken our alliance, to divide us. In fact, they have done exactly the opposite. Our unity has been cemented, both within the E.U. and across the Atlantic,” Michel said.

Video shows a group including journalists and Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskiy running from mortar fire in the nation’s Donetsk region, near a separatist-controlled area, on Saturday.

Footage filmed by Maryan Kushnir of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian service captures the group — many dressed in camouflage garb and safety vests — running and taking cover on the ground as blasts are heard in Novoluhanske.

“Here! On the ground!” came shouts from the group. “Move it! Fire!”

According to Kushnir, mortars were fired first, then shells fell about 1,000 feet (300 meters) from the location of the minister and journalists.

There has been a sharp upswing in firing from the separatists’ side over the past few days. Separatist officials have accused Ukraine on the messaging app Telegram of firing on the territories that their forces control and said they had to respond accordingly. Ukrainian officials have denied attacks.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, said that what Ukraine has seen over the past few days stands in stark contrast to what Russian officials have claimed, citing intensifying shelling by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.

“While preparing to defend our country, we’re using every possibility to still choose the diplomatic path and force Russia to choose the diplomatic path,” Markarova said. “We are calling not only on the aggressor, which is Russia, but also on all of our friends and allies to get together and use every opportunity to still deter Russia from invading.”

In frank terms, Markarova said there were many Ukrainians in and out of the country who were “ready to resist and fight for Ukraine,” and she emphasized that Russia’s aggressions would ultimately “not help their cause.”

“Whatever crimes they are willing to commit in order to kill some of us, it will not stop others” from fighting for Ukraine, she said.

In a contentious interview on “Face the Nation,” Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, continued to insist there were no plans for a Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite a massive buildup of their troops on three of Ukraine’s borders and despite U.S. intelligence that indicated those troops had received orders to proceed with a full-scale attack.

Antonov also decried NATO as “not a defensive alliance” and pushed back when “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan pointed out that Russia’s actions did not match its officials’ words.

“You’ll see that we did a lot … to withdraw our troops from various regions that are very close to [the] Baltic States,” Antonov said. “And nobody even said [to] us ‘thank you.’ ”

Asked Sunday if the United States would recognize Crimea and eastern Ukraine territories as part of Russia to avoid war, Secretary of State Antony Blinken definitively said “no.”

“No, hard stop. That is not up for negotiation?” CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan asked him.

“That’s correct,” Blinken responded.

In an interview that also aired Sunday on “Face the Nation,” Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, insisted to Brennan that those were not the issues at hand. Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

“[The] issue of Crimea is solved. [The] issue of Crimea is closed for us,” Antonov said. “It’s a Russian territory and we don’t want even to discuss this issue at all.”

Antonov denied there were plans for a Russian invasion of Ukraine, though Brennan later noted that their interview had been taped before U.S. intelligence reports indicated that Russian troops, which have been amassed on three of Ukraine’s borders, had been ordered to proceed with a full-scale attack.

“We have our legitimate right to have our troops where we want on Russian territory,” Antonov said. “And I would like to say to you that we are not threatening to anybody.”

Six months ago, the transatlantic alliance was on shaky ground, with President Biden’s promise of a reinvigorated NATO under U.S. leadership severely undermined by the Afghanistan debacle and a foreign policy that seemed unready for prime time.

Today, Biden and his team have redeemed themselves in the eyes of many NATO allies, with a tough stance on Ukraine and the successful wrangling of the often-fractious alliance to support it.

Ukraine’s fate, and Russia’s future relationship with the West, remain uncertain. Biden has said he is convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin, with more than 150,000 troops and massive weaponry amassed on Ukraine’s borders, has decided to invade, despite the West’s offered carrot of negotiations over a new European security architecture to address his concerns if he withdraws, and the threatened stick of harsh sanctions and isolation if he does not.

But regardless of the outcome, officials, diplomats and experts have already begun charting the winners and losers.

With Western officials warning that Russia could launch an attack on Ukraine at any moment, French President Emmanuel Macron made another attempt at diplomacy Sunday, phoning both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Macron’s conversation with Putin lasted 90 minutes, according to Kremlin pool reporters.

Macron’s office said the two agreed to work on facilitating a meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group — which includes Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe — to be held in the next few hours with the aim of agreeing to a cease-fire on the line of contact between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists.

But the Kremlin’s readout of their discussion didn’t mention a possible Trilateral Contact Group meeting. Its statement said that “taking into account the acuteness of the current state of affairs, the presidents considered it expedient to intensify the search for solutions through diplomatic means.”

Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that everything Putin and Macron talked about was in the Kremlin readout and anything else is “interpretations.”

Zelensky said on Twitter that Ukraine stands “for intensifying the peace process. We support the immediate convening of the [Trilateral Contact Group] and the immediate introduction of a regime of silence.”

The Ukrainian military said Saturday that there’s been a “tenfold” increase in shelling from the separatists’ side of the demarcation line since Thursday. Moscow and the separatists have claimed that Ukraine is firing on their positions, which is denied by Ukrainian officials.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “will not stop at Ukraine,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said, warning that neighboring countries could be targeted if the international community fails to “stand up” to what she called “Russian aggression.”

“It could be Ukraine next week, but then which country will it be next?” Truss said in an interview with Britain’s Mail on Sunday as she called on Britain and its allies to avert a global crisis.

Truss pointed to Putin’s ambitions to “create the Greater Russia,” saying that she believes “he wants to go back to the situation as it was before where Russia had control over huge swaths of Eastern Europe.” ” … He’s been very clear — his ambition doesn’t just lead to him taking control of Ukraine, he wants to turn the clock back to the mid-1990s or even before then.” Truss cited the Baltic states and the western Balkans as being at risk.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, who has maintained closer ties with Putin than most Western leaders, said he believes there are still three possible outcomes to the situation between Russia and Ukraine, with a peaceful resolution being the alternative that is furthest away.

“The second option is that we will see a full-scale war,” Niinisto said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “And the third one, which is as bad, is that we see this kind of … two steps forward, one back, that is increasing tensions all the time.”

That third scenario is the one Niinisto believes is the most likely in the near future. Niinisto told the New York Times earlier this month that he had noticed a change in Putin’s “state of mind” and “decisiveness” with regard to Ukraine, but said that Putin acts in ways that are difficult to predict — perhaps intentionally to sow confusion.

Nevertheless, Niinisto said Sunday he does not fear Russian aggression in Finland, despite the two countries sharing an 830-mile-long border, partly because of geography and because Finland has been a stable democracy for more than a century. But Russia will be more dangerous if it invades Ukraine successfully, he added.

“I think that we are actually almost in a colder situation than we were during that traditional Cold War,” Niinisto said, noting that there were agreements then between the United States and the Soviet Union limiting arms. “Now, we do not have actually anything, no agreements anymore. So this makes the situation, in my opinion, much more vulnerable.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said President Biden is prepared to engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin “at any time, in any format, if that can help prevent a war,” despite the increased threat of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“We believe President Putin has made the decision [to invade Ukraine],” Blinken said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “But until the tanks are actually rolling and the planes are flying, we will use every opportunity and every minute we have to see if diplomacy can still dissuade President Putin from carrying this forward.”

Like Blinken, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Sunday that the Biden administration has forecast crippling sanctions as a deterrent on Putin, while holding them back so far because an invasion has not begun.

“If you pull the trigger on that deterrent, well, then it doesn’t exist anymore as a deterrent,” Kirby said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“[Putin] has not conducted another invasion in Ukraine yet, and we still think there is time to prevent that,” Kirby added. “It’s supposed to be a deterrent. If you punish somebody for something they haven’t done yet, then they may as well just go ahead and do it. So, we’re holding that in abeyance and we’re hoping that can affect the calculus of Mr. Putin.”