Moscow – The Ukrainian government said on Monday that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s requests to speak with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about escalating conflict in eastern Ukraine had been ignored. Moscow has refused to accept any request from Kiev for such talks.
Tensions between neighbors have been rising steadily for several weeks, with battles intensifying in eastern Ukraine – a region that has been surrounded by conflict since Russia backed Ukrainian separatists there seven years ago. Putin has he sent thousands of forces recently to the Ukrainian border, raising concerns among politicians in the United States and the European Union.
“The president’s office, of course, has made a request to speak with Vladimir Putin. We have not yet received a response, and we very much hope that this is not a refusal to engage in dialogue,” Ukrainian President Iuliia’s spokesman told Reuters on Monday Mendel.
She told Russia’s Interfax news agency that the request for talks was sent on March 26, after four Ukrainian soldiers were killed in bombings 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 Putin unilaterally annexed, far from Ukraine, and declared it Russian in 2014.
Mendel said Zelenskyy would travel to Paris this week to discuss Russia’s actions and escalate the conflict in Ukraine’s Donbass region, Reuters reported.
The current escalation further tightens US-Russia relations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned Russia against aggressive action, accusing Putin’s army of accumulating more forces near the Ukrainian border than at any time since 2014.
“President Biden has been very clear in this regard: if Russia acts recklessly or aggressively, there will be costs, there will be consequences,” Blinken said during a weekend interview.
The Kremlin said Russian and Ukrainian political advisers were working to hold a possible new round of talks in the so-called Normandy format – a multilateral dialogue involving French and German leaders.
German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer urged Moscow on Monday to declare its 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 in Germany, called Russia’s build-up of troops a test for the West, warning that if the situation continues to escalate, Moscow should face new sanctions.
“The answer must be clear and harsh,” he said.
Ukrainian Presidential Press Office through AP
In an interview with CNN while visiting his front-line troops, Zelenskyy said Ukraine “needs more than words” of support from Washington and other European allies as it confronts Russia.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said that Russia’s military forces are free to move on the territory of the country as it sees fit and that the movements of troops near the Ukrainian border – exercises, according to Moscow – do not pose a threat.
Last week, Putin accused Ukraine of “dangerous provocative actions” in the Ukrainian region of Donbas. Relations between Kiev and Moscow have deteriorated since Putin first supported separatists in the area and seized Crimea in 2014. The Kremlin insists that separatists’ support is limited to political and humanitarian support, but the West has long accused Putin of sent military and hardware forces.
The seven-year conflict between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian government has claimed more than 13,000 lives. On Sunday, the Ukrainian army reported another death – a soldier allegedly killed by artillery fire from Russian-backed fighters.
Over the weekend, Kremlin spokesman Peskov said no further peace talks could take place before the Minsk peace accords were met. The Minsk agreements, concluded during the 2015 negotiations in the vicinity of Belarus, put an end to the worst hostilities in the Donbas, but the full agreement has never been fully implemented.
Since then, peace talks have been stalled, with Russia and Ukraine failing to find a new common ground.