US President Joe Biden (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet during the US-Russia summit at Villa La Grange on June 16, 2021 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Peter Claunzer Getty Images
President Joe Biden has accepted “in principle” a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which could be the latest diplomacy over tensions over Ukraine and a possible way to prevent a looming Moscow-led invasion.
Jen Psaki, a White House spokeswoman, said Sunday night that the summit between the two world leaders would take place after a meeting between Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. This meeting is scheduled for later this week.
Psaki noted that the agreement was conditional on Moscow refraining from invading.
“As the president has repeatedly clarified, we are committed to pursuing diplomacy until the invasion begins,” Psaki said in a statement. “President Biden has generally accepted a meeting with President Putin after this commitment, again if there has been no invasion. We are always ready for diplomacy. “
The Kremlin said Monday that there are no specific plans for a meeting between Putin and Biden, according to Reuters.
The news of a possible one-on-one meeting between Biden and Putin comes when the White House warns that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could come at any time. Moscow has been building up its military strength on the northern and eastern borders of its former Soviet neighbor for weeks, with Russia’s recent total of about 190,000.
The threat of an attack by Russia has kept global markets on edge for most of the past few weeks, with oil prices rising and stocks volatile.
The broad S&P 500, which tracks the performance of the largest US companies, fell 3.69% in February, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 4.8%. Crude oil futures in West Texas rose 4.2 percent in the past month.
The possibility of imminent conflict forced Biden earlier Sunday to cancel plans to return to his home in Delaware after a two-hour meeting with his national security team.
The rare Sunday meeting of the National Security Council began around noon and lasted just over two hours, according to reporters who watched the attendees arrive and then leave the White House complex. The sudden cancellation of the president’s holiday and weekend plans has intensified in recent days, given the administration’s belief in an impending Russian offensive.
Biden spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron, who is emerging as an important diplomat between the United States and Russia over the frantic weekend. Macron’s office said that only this weekend the French president spoke with Biden, Putin, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
Moscow has so far insisted it has no plans to invade Ukraine, saying its forces in Belarus are there to conduct military exercises next week.
Despite US fears that Russia could strike every day, the White House also stressed that there is still room for diplomacy. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg appears to have left room for a peaceful solution when he spoke to CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at a security conference in Munich on Saturday.
“They have every opportunity, Russia, to launch an attack on Ukraine without any warning. No one denies that Russia has all these forces,” Stoltenberg said. “The question is whether they will launch an attack?”
These comments came when the Russian military fired ballistic and cruise missiles on Saturday, an exercise the Kremlin called a “planned exercise of strategic deterrence forces.”
– Christina Wilkie from CNBC contributed to the report