Macron on diplomatic shuttle to Kyiv to ease Ukraine crisis

Kyiv, Ukraine: (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron brought his diplomatic effort to defuse the crisis over Ukraine to its capital of Kyiv on Tuesday, a day after hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin yielded no apparent breakthrough.

Macron met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as fears of a possible Russian invasion mount. Moscow has massed over 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders, but insists it has no plans to attack.

The Kremlin wants guarantees from the West that NATO will not accept Ukraine and other former Soviet nations as members, that it halt weapon deployments there and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe — demands the U.S. and NATO reject as nonstarters.

Western leaders in recent weeks have engaged in multiple rounds of diplomacy in the hope of de-escalating the tensions and preventing an attack. High-level talks have taken place against the backdrop of military drills in Russia and Belarus. On Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said six large landing ships were moving from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea for exercises.

Macron’s talks with Putin on Monday lasted more than five hours, and the French leader told reporters that they allowed him to ensure that “there’s no degradation and no (further) escalation.” He said he did not expect Putin to make any “gestures”, saying his objective was to “prevent an escalation and open new perspectives. ... That objective is met.” Macron said Putin “set a collective trap” when he initiated the exchange of written documents with the U.S. Moscow submitted its demands to Washington in the form of draft agreements that were released to the public, and insisted on a written response, which was leaked to the press. “In the history of diplomacy, there was never a crisis that has been settled by exchanges of letters which are to be made public afterward,” he said, adding that is why he decided to travel to Moscow for direct talks.

Putin said after the meeting that the U.S. and NATO ignored Moscow’s demands, but signaled his readiness to continue talking.

NATO, U.S. and European leaders flatly reject the demands that they say challenge NATO’s core principles, like shutting the door to Ukraine or other countries that might seek membership; but they have offered to talk about other Russian security concerns in Europe.

Putin warned that Ukraine membership in NATO could trigger a war between Russia and the alliance should Kyiv move to retake the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. In that case, he said, European countries would be drawn into a military conflict with Russia where “there will be no winners.” U.S. President Joe Biden has said that any prospect of Ukraine entering NATO “in the near term is not very likely,” but he and other NATO member nations and NATO itself refuse to rule out Ukraine’s entry into the alliance at a future date.

Biden met in Washington on Monday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who also will travel to Kyiv and Moscow on Feb. 14-15.

Biden vowed that the Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, which has been completed but is not yet operating, will be blocked “if Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine again.” Halting the pipeline’s operation would hurt Russia economically but also cause supply problems for Germany.