The White House says President Joe Biden is ordering new sanctions after Russia moved to recognise separatist eastern Ukraine regions.

The Biden administration calls Monday’s announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin a “blatant violation of Russia’s international commitments.” The sanctions will prohibit new investment, trade and financing in the two separatist regions of Ukraine recognized by Putin. The European Union’s top officials have also said the bloc will impose sanctions.

The European Union’s top officials say the bloc will impose sanctions against those involved in Russia’s recognition of two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine amid fears of a potential Russian invasion of the country.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel say in a joint statement that the recognition is “a blatant violation of international law.” The statement adds that the bloc “will react with sanctions” and “reiterates its unwavering support to Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders.”

A stream of top Russian officials argued for recognising the independence of the separatist regions, although some suggested Putin didn’t have to do it immediately.

With an estimated 150,000 Russian troops massed on three sides of Ukraine, the US has warned that Moscow has already decided to invade. Still, the American and Russian presidents tentatively agreed to a possible meeting in a last-ditch effort to avoid war.

If Russia moves in, the meeting will be off, but the prospect of a face-to-face summit resuscitated hopes that diplomacy could prevent a devastating conflict, which would result in massive casualties and huge economic damage across Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy.

Even as the diplomatic efforts inched forward, potential flashpoints multiplied.

Sustained shelling continued on Monday in Ukraine’s east. Unusually, Russia said it had fended off an “incursion” from Ukraine — which Ukrainian officials denied. And Russia decided to prolong military drills in Belarus, which could offer a staging ground for an attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

If Russia recognises the separatist regions, that will fuel tensions further since Moscow could use the move to openly send its troops and weapons there. Until now, Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of supporting the separatists, but Moscow has denied that, saying that Russians who fought there were volunteers.

At a meeting, Putin’s top defence and security officials paraded before him one by one to outline arguments for recognising the regions as independent to protect civilians there. At one point, one slipped up and said he favoured including them as part of Russian territory — but Putin quickly corrected him.

Some suggested, however, that Russia give the West a few more days to press Ukraine to fulfil a peace agreement that halted major fighting in 2015.

Leaders of the regions released televised statements pleading with Putin to recognise them and sign treaties that would allow for military aid to protect them from what they described as an ongoing Ukrainian military offensive. Russia’s lower house of parliament made the same plea last week.

Ukrainian authorities deny launching an offensive and accuse Russia of provocation.
Russia similarly recognised two breakaway regions of the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008 after a brief war and expanded its military presence in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the Black Sea.

But the Kremlin initially signalled its reluctance to recognise the regions in eastern Ukraine, arguing that would effectively shatter the peace deal, which marked a major diplomatic coup for Moscow, requiring Ukrainian authorities to offer broad self-rule to the rebel regions.

The deal was resented by many in Ukraine who saw it as a capitulation, a blow to the country’s integrity, and a betrayal of national interests. Putin and other officials argued that Ukrainian authorities have shown no appetite for implementing it.

With the prospect of war looming, French President Emmanuel Macron scrambled to broker a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Putin, who denies he has any plans to attack Ukraine.

Russia says it wants Western guarantees that Nato won’t allow Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to join as members — and Putin said a simple moratorium on Ukraine’s accession wouldn’t be enough. Moscow has also demanded the alliance halt weapons deployments to Ukraine and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe — demands flatly rejected by the West.

Macron’s office said both leaders had “accepted the principle of such a summit”, to be followed by a broader meeting that would include other “relevant stakeholders to discuss security and strategic stability in Europe”.

The language from Moscow and Washington was more cautious, but neither side denied a meeting is under discussion.

During the Kremlin meeting, several top officials spoke sceptically about a possible summit, saying it was unlikely to yield any results.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, meanwhile, said the administration has always been ready to talk to avert war — but was also prepared to respond to any attack.

“So when President Macron asked President Biden yesterday if he was prepared in principle to meet with President Putin, if Russia did not invade, of course, President Biden said yes,” he told NBC’s Today show. “But every indication we see on the ground right now in terms of the disposition of Russian forces is that they are, in fact, getting prepared for a major attack on Ukraine.”

Macron’s office said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are set to lay the groundwork for the potential summit when they meet.

Amid the hopeful signs, there were also worrying ones. Last week, shelling spiked along the tense line of contact that separates Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of Donbas. More than 14,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted there in 2014, shortly after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Ukraine and the separatist rebels have traded blame for massive cease-fire violations with hundreds of explosions recorded daily. On Friday, separatist officials announced the evacuation of civilians and military mobilisation in the face of what they described as an imminent Ukrainian offensive on the rebel regions. Ukrainian officials have strongly denied any plans to launch such an attack.

While Russia-backed separatists have charged that Ukrainian forces were firing on residential areas, Associated Press journalists reporting from several towns and villages in Ukrainian-held territory along the line of contact have not witnessed any notable escalation from the Ukrainian side and have documented signs of intensified shelling by the separatists that destroyed homes and ripped up roads.

Some residents of the main rebel-held city of Donetsk described sporadic shelling by Ukrainian forces, but they added that it wasn’t on the same scale as earlier in the conflict.

The separatist authorities said at least four civilians were killed by Ukrainian shelling over the past 24 hours and several others were wounded. Ukraine’s military said two Ukrainian soldiers were killed over the weekend, and another serviceman was wounded on Monday.

Ukrainian military spokesman Pavlo Kovalchyuk said the separatists were “cynically firing from residential areas using civilians as shields”.

He insisted that Ukrainian forces weren’t returning fire.

In the village of Novognativka on the Ukraine government-controlled side, 60-year-old Ekaterina Evseeva said the shelling was worse than at the height of fighting early in the conflict.

“We are on the edge of nervous breakdowns. And there is nowhere to run,” she said, her voice trembling.

In another worrying sign, the Russian military said it killed five suspected “saboteurs” who crossed from Ukraine into Russia’s Rostov region and also destroyed two armoured vehicles. Ukrainian Border Guard spokesman Andriy Demchenko dismissed the claim as “disinformation”.

Amid the heightened invasion fears, the US administration sent a letter to the United Nations human rights chief claiming that Moscow has compiled a list of Ukrainians to be killed or sent to detention camps after the invasion.

Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the claim was a lie and no such list exists.

— AP

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