The top diplomats of Russia and the United States were to meet in Switzerland on Friday to discuss the soaring tensions over Ukraine after a flurry of meetings between officials on both sides in the last week.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Geneva for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after a swing through Europe to shore up U.S. allies commitments to hit Russia with sanctions if it goes ahead with an invasion of Ukraine.
Washington s hopes of a united front of opposition to Moscow were complicated by U.S. President Joe Biden's comments at a news conference on Wednesday in which he predicted Russia would move in on Ukraine and said Moscow would pay dearly.
Russia has massed tens of thousands of troops on its borders with Ukraine, and Western states fear Moscow is planning a new attack on a country it invaded in 2014 to annex the Crimean peninsula. Russia denies it is planning an attack, but it says it could take unspecified military action if a list of demands is not met, including a promise from NATO never to admit Ukraine.
Russia had been receiving warnings for at least a month, according to a Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The tension that has now arisen in Europe can not be destabilised and Peskov believes that they can contribute to the destabilization of the situation.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, Blinken tried to assure Ukraine of U.S. support. Before meeting with German, French and British officials in Berlin on Thursday, Blinken said Russian President Vladimir Putin could order an invasion imminently.
The deputy of Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Lavrov's deputy, Sergei Ryabkov, also met in Geneva last week, where both sides set seemingly irreconcilable positions.
Russia wants NATO to promise not to admit Ukraine as a member and halt its eastward expansion. The U.S. led alliance has rejected that.
U.S. officials have played down the hopes of concrete results from Friday s meeting.
On Thursday, Blinken said that diplomatic efforts this week meant he could represent a shared view of Western nations to Russia and press Moscow to step back after repeatedly calling out Russian disinformation aimed at destabilizing Ukraine.
Blinken said that unity gives us strength, a strength that Russia does not and cannot match. It is why I ll be able to represent a shared view, a shared preference, on the part of the United States and our European allies and partners for finding a diplomatic path forward to de-escalate this conflict. But that unity appeared to be undermined by comments by Biden, who said on Wednesday that the West s response may not be unified if Russia only makes a minor incursion into Ukraine. The comments forced administration officials to issue clarifications, but they also raised doubts among U.S. allies that Washington was willing to give Putin some leeway to avert a full-scale invasion.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted an apparent rebuke on Thursday, reminding the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations. There is little grief from the loss of loved ones, just as there are no minor casualties. Orysia Lutsevych, a Ukraine analyst at the Chatham House think-tank in London, said the Geneva meeting would give the United States the chance to clarify Biden's comments.
She said that Blinken will be able to straighten out some of this ambiguity if he has the mandate. There was some irritation on the Ukrainian side that the West was not turning rhetorical support into concrete action.
But in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, residents interviewed by Reuters said they were confident of Russia's backing.
I believe in Putin, he must help us, he mustn't abandon us. I don't know Biden and I don't want to know him, but I believe in Russia, said a pensioner who gave her name as Tatyana.
Another 28-year-old named Alexander said there was a small chance of a peaceful outcome.
The future of our younger brothers, sisters, and children is in the hands of our younger brothers, sisters and children. He said that he hopes that in their negotiations they will reach the point that all of us and them need, and that we will return to peace and harmony.