Vladimir Putin has told Boris Johnson he wants immediate talks to secure clear legal agreements that Nato will not expand eastwards. According to a Kremlin readout of the two leaders phone-call on Monday, Putin said that talks were needed to discuss Nato's intentions and to clarify Ukraine's plans for the east of the country.
The call marked the first time that the two men had spoken before the Cop 26 climate summit in Glasgow. Johnson expressed the UK's deep concern over the buildup of Russian forces on Ukraine's border and warned that any destabilising action would have significant consequences. The British prime minister also called for the issues to be resolved through diplomatic channels.
The longer readout of the call from the Kremlin cited specific examples of Kyiv's destructive disruption of the Minsk agreements, the deal that was supposed to settle the Russian-Ukraine dispute.
Putin claimed that the Ukrainian authorities were deliberately exacerbating the situation on the line of contact, as well as using heavy weapons and attack drones prohibited by the Minsk Package of Measures in the conflict zone.
He claimed Russian-speaking populations were still suffering from discrimination inside Ukraine.
Putin wanted clear international legal agreements that would exclude any further Nato advance to the east, and the removal of weapons that threaten Russia in neighbouring states, mainly in Ukraine.
He said Russia was preparing clear legal documents to support its demands.
The leaders agreed to continue the discussion of the issues raised through various channels.
It was not clear if the talks represented a significant advance in the discussions between Putin and the US president, Joe Biden, which had made little headway.
Privately, leaders in the west are confused about Putin's intentions but fear the level of rhetoric and the increasing demands from Russia are setting up the conditions for a serious threat of war rather than merely testing western determination. It has been suggested that Putin's decision to test the resolve and unity of the west may have been prompted by the departure of Angela Merkel as German chancellor.
There have been growing tensions over Ukraine at a time when arms control agreements and strategic stability dialogue between the two countries have been severely corroded.
Russia threatened to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe as a response to what it claims is the plan of Nato to do the same.
The threat, delivered by deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov, signals the potential return to the nuclear missile standoff in Europe of the 1980s when US Pershings were ranged against Russian SS 20 s.
In that tense period, the world came close to a nuclear war when Moscow came to believe that Nato's 1983 Able Archer exercises were a prelude to attack. The missiles were withdrawn after the US and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces INF treaty in 1987.
Donald Trump withdrew the US from the INF treaty in the year 2019 after years of US complaints that Russia was cheating by building and deploying an intermediate-range missile, the 9 M 729. Russia denied the charge, saying the range of the missile was legal.
Ryabkov told Russia's RIA news agency that Moscow would deploy nuclear missiles if Nato refused to engage in talks.
Nato said it had no plans to bring nuclear missiles back to Europe, but Ryabkov said Russia had a lack of trust in the alliance, pointing out the reconstitution of the US 56th Artillery Command last month, which operated the missile batteries in Europe until it was shut down in 1991.
The military and technical military nature of our response will be affected by the lack of progress towards a political and diplomatic solution to the problem, according to Ryabkov. They don't permit themselves to do anything that could increase our security, they believe they can act as they need, to their advantage, and we just have to swallow all that and deal with it. This is not going to continue. He claimed that Russia is currently watching a moratorium on intermediate range nuclear missiles, a claim that Nato disputes. The US alleges that Russia has deployed two battalions of 9 m 729 missiles in 2017, one in the south-west and the other in an unknown location.