Moscow – The Ukrainian government said on Monday that requests from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to speak to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about the escalating conflict in Eastern Ukraine was ignored. Moscow denied receiving any request from Kiev for such talks.
Tension between neighbors has steadily increased for several weeks, with more intense skirmishes in eastern Ukraine – a region that has been in conflict since Russia first supported Ukrainian separatists there seven years ago. Putin has sent thousands of troops to the Ukrainian border, causing concern for politicians in the United States and the European Union.
“The president’s office has, of course, submitted a request to speak with Vladimir Putin. We have not yet received a response and we sincerely hope that this is not a refusal of dialogue,” Ukrainian presidential spokeswoman Iuliia Mendel told Reuters Monday.
She told Russian news agency Interfax that the call for talks was sent on March 26, after four Ukrainian soldiers were killed by shelling in the east of the country.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he “has not seen any requests in recent days.”
Mendel said Russia had gathered more than 40,000 troops on Ukraine’s eastern border, and more than 40,000 in Crimea, the region that Putin unilaterally annexed from Ukraine and declared Russian in 2014.
Mendel said Zelenskyy would travel to Paris this week to discuss Russia’s actions and the escalating conflict in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region, Reuters reported.
The current escalation is also putting further pressure on US-Russia relations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned Russia of aggressive actions and accuses Putin’s army of gathering more troops near the Ukrainian border than ever before since 2014.
“President Biden has been very clear about this: if Russia acts recklessly or aggressively, there will be costs and consequences,” Blinken said in an interview this weekend.
The Kremlin has said Russian and Ukrainian political advisers are working to organize a possible new round of talks in the so-called Norman format – a multilateral dialogue involving the leaders of France and Germany.
German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called on Moscow on Monday to make known his intentions in the region, saying that if Putin’s government “has nothing to hide, it could easily explain why troops are being moved.”
Manfred Weber, a prominent Member of the European Parliament from Germany, called Russia’s troop build-up a test for the West and warned that if the situation continues to escalate, Moscow should face new sanctions.
“The answer has to be clear and tough,” he said.
Ukrainian Presidential Press Service via AP
In an interview with CNN, given when he visited his forces on the front lines, Zelenskyy said Ukraine “needs more than words” of support from Washington and other European allies in the confrontation with Russia.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said that Russian armed forces are free to move within the territory of the country as they see fit, and that the troop movements near the Ukrainian border – exercises according to Moscow – pose no threat.
Last week, Putin accused Ukraine of “dangerous provocative actions” in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Relations between Kiev and Moscow have deteriorated since Putin first supported the separatists in the area and conquered Crimea in 2014. The Kremlin insists its support for the separatists is limited to political and humanitarian aid, but the West has long accused Putin of using military forces and hardware.
The seven-year conflict between the pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian government has claimed more than 13,000 lives. On Sunday, the Ukrainian army reported another death – a soldier reportedly killed by artillery fire from the Russian-backed fighters.
Last weekend, Kremlin spokesman Peskov said no more peace talks could take place until the terms of the Minsk peace accords were met. The Minsk Accords, reached during the 2015 talks in neighboring Belarus, ended the worst hostilities in Donbas, but the full accord has never been fully implemented.
Since then, peace talks have stalled and Russia and Ukraine have not found new common ground.