Moscow: Efforts to ease the crisis in Ukraine through the madness of telephone diplomacy failed to relieve tension Saturday, with US President Joe Biden warned that Russia faced “a quick and severe cost” if the troops did invading.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin slammed Western claims that Moscow planned a step such as “provocative speculation” which could lead to conflict in the former Soviet country, according to Russian call reading with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Speaking after the new telephone talks between Putin and Biden, Top Kremlin Yury’s top foreign policy adviser told conference calls: “Hysteria has reached its peak.”
The week of the tension that had seen Russia almost surrounded her western neighbors with more than 100,000 soldiers intensified after Washington warned that an all-out invasion could begin “every day” and Russia launched the largest naval exercise in the Black Sea.
“If Russia makes further invasion to Ukraine, the United States along with allies and our partners will respond firmly and impose rapid and severe costs in Russia,” said Biden to Putin, according to the White House.
While the United States is ready to be involved in diplomacy, “We are both prepared for other scenarios,” Biden said, because the two countries looked at one of the Great crises in the northeast relationship since the Cold War.
While Biden-Putin talks are “professional and substantive,” lasting more than one hour, they produce “no fundamental change” in the dynamics, a US senior official told reporters.
State Secretary Antony Blinken reaffirms US warnings that Russia can make an incident of “a fake flag” to attack.
“No one must be surprised if Russia incites provocation or incident, which is then used to justify the planned military action so far,” said Blinken, who spoke with his colleague Russian Sergei Lavrov on Saturday.
The Russian Ministry of Defense added to the atmosphere of fever by announcing that it had pursued the US submarine, he said he had crossed into his territorial waters near the Kuril Islands in the North Pacific.
But the orders of the US Indo-Pacific denied it had been operating in the Russian territorial waters.
Putin began the afternoon holding entertainment with Macron which lasted almost two hours.
The Macron office said “both expressed the desire to continue the dialogue” but, like Washington, reported that there was no clear progress.
Possible provocation ‘
Russia added unpleasant tones by pulling several diplomatic staff from Ukraine on Saturday, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the decision was asked by fear of “possible provocations from the Kyiv regime.”
But Washington and a number of European countries along with Israel quote the threat of the bigger Russian invasion when they asked their citizens to leave Ukraine as soon as possible.
The United Kingdom and the United States also attracted most of their remaining military advisors, while the US Embassy ordered “mostly” Kyiv staff to leave.
Australia said it had directed all the embassy staff left in Kyiv to be evacuated, and Canada said it closed the embassy while and moved operations to the Western City of Lviv.
Dutch carrier KLM announced that it suspended commercial flights to Ukraine until further notice.
The western prospect that escaped pushed Kyiv to exempt to its citizens to “remain calm.”
“At present, the biggest enemy of the people panicked,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a visit to the troops stationed near the Russian Peninsula.
‘Every day now’
Washington on Friday issued the most terrible warning that Russia had gathered sufficient strength to launch a serious attack.
“Our views that military actions can occur every day now, and can occur before the end of the Olympics, only grows in terms of robustness,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned.