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President Biden Will Soon Call Putin About the Crisis Around Ukraine

Today, US President Biden has a video call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. A critical call about the situation in Ukraine, where tensions have been cut in recent weeks.

 

Biden will warn Putin that Russia should not invade neighbouring Ukraine. He threatens hefty economic sanctions if Russia attacks Ukraine anyway.

Russia has gathered tens of thousands of soldiers and heavy military equipment on the border with Ukraine in recent weeks. Russia insists it is an exercise, saying it has the right to deploy and station troops on its territory where it wants.

Russia claims it only wants guarantees that Ukraine will never join the Western military alliance, NATO. Russia is also opposed to deploying NATO missiles and defence systems in neighbouring countries such as Poland.

Ria Laenen teaches Russian politics at the University of Leuven: “It is an important conversation between Biden and Putin, regardless of whether anything even comes out. The US is very concerned and is therefore pushing for immediate consultations. For Putin, this is something he wanted. Putin can thus make it clear that Russia is a global player that is a superpower.”

President Biden talks about “severe economic sanctions”. However, white House officials did not fail to propose various options: a ban on foreign investors from cooperating with Russian banks or a ban on buying Russian loans, up to and including the ban on Russian companies from using the to be active in the American or European market.

A step further would be that Russian banks would be ultimately or partially cut off from international money traffic. That would make international trade with Russia almost impossible. President Biden initially refers to economic sanctions as means that the US does not intend to provide large-scale military assistance to Ukraine. However, Ukraine is not a member of NATO.

“It is not clear what Putin plans to do with those Russian troops on the border of Ukraine. But that is precisely Putin’s “brinkmanship”. A policy dangerously close to escalation, to concede just at the end. So it’s a negotiation tactic. But we don’t know,” said Laenen. “NATO enlargement remains a red line for Moscow,” says Laenen. “At the same time, that red line is stretched a bit by Russia; Putin is now demanding that no anti-missile system be allowed in Ukraine.”

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