US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed on the need to pursue ‘diplomacy and deterrence’ in response to Russia’s buildup of more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine. Catch up on the day's events as they unfolded on FRANCE 24.
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10:33pm Paris time
Zelensky thanks Biden for military aid, says it can reduce ‘panic’ in Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked US President Joe Biden for sending military aid to Ukraine during a phone call Sunday, saying the aid can reduce “panic” in the former Soviet country as it faces a Russian troop buildup near its border, according to Ukraine’s readout of the call.
FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg reports from Kyiv.
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9:27pm Paris time
OSCE staff begin leaving Donetsk in eastern Ukraine amid tensions over Russian troop buildup
Staff of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has been monitoring the situation in eastern Ukraine, began to pull out of the rebel-held city of Donetsk on Sunday as fears of a possible Russian invasion grew.
A Reuters journalist saw several armoured cars being loaded with suitcases and leaving the mission's headquarters.
The OSCE said in a statement that "certain participating states" had told their citizens at the mission to leave within the next days. It did not name the countries but said the mission would carry on with its work.
One diplomatic source said 160 OSCE staff were being taken out of Ukraine, including Dutch, Canadian, Slovakian and Albanian citizens. That number could not be immediately confirmed by another source, Reuters reported.
The OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine has been deployed in eastern Ukraine since 2014 when war broke out between Ukrainian troops and Russia-backed separatists. Kyiv says more than 14,000 people have been killed.
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9:15pm Paris time
Zelensky invites Biden to visit Kyiv in hopes arrival will ‘contribute to de-escalation’
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky invited US President Joe Biden to visit Ukraine, Ukraine’s presidential office said.
"I'm convinced that your arrival in Kyiv in the coming days, which are crucial for stabilising the situation, will be a powerful signal and contribute to de-escalation," the presidential office quoted Zelensky as saying in a statement.
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7:44pm Paris time
Ukraine wants talks with Russia, members of European security organisation to discuss troop buildup
Ukraine said on Sunday it wanted talks with Russia and members of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) within 48 hours to discuss Russia's military buildup near Ukraine and inside annexed Crimea.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Moscow had not responded after Kyiv on Friday invoked a part of the Vienna Document, a set of security agreements, to demand Moscow explain its military activities.
"Consequently, we take the next step. We request a meeting with Russia and all participating states within 48 hours to discuss its reinforcement & redeployment along our border & in temporarily occupied Crimea," Kuleba tweeted.
"If Russia is serious when it talks about the indivisibility of security in the OSCE space, it must fulfill its commitment to military transparency in order to de-escalate tensions and enhance security for all," he said.
Tensions have been mounting for weeks over the buildup near Ukraine. Washington has said an invasion could happen anytime. Moscow denies planning an invasion and has accused the West of hysteria.
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7:34pm Paris time
Re-elected German President Steinmeier says Russia bears 'responsibility' for risk of war in Ukraine
Germany's president on Sunday said "responsibility" for the risk of "war" in Ukraine lay with Russia, bringing greater clarity to Berlin's position on the crisis which has been criticised as too lenient towards Moscow.
Speaking after his re-election for a second five-year term, Frank-Walter Steinmeier called directly on Russian President Vladimir Putin to "untie the noose around Ukraine's neck".
On the eve of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's trip to Kyiv and Moscow, the continent was confronted with the "danger of a military conflict, of war in eastern Europe – and Russia carries the responsibility for that", Social Democrat Steinmeier said.
"Peace cannot be taken for granted. It must be worked on in dialogue and when necessary, with clear words, deterrence and determination," the former foreign minister said.
Speaking shortly afterwards, Scholz echoed his party colleague Steinmeier, saying there was a "serious threat to peace in Europe" and warning of retaliation.
"In the event of a military aggression against Ukraine that threatens its territorial integrity and sovereignty, that will lead to tough sanctions that we have carefully prepared and which we can immediately put into force, together with our allies in NATO and Europe," Scholz said.
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7:12pm Paris time
Biden and Zelensky agree on need to pursue ‘diplomacy and deterrence’ during phone call on Ukraine
US President Joe Biden spoke at length with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday about Russia's military buildup along Ukraine's borders, with the pair agreeing on the need to pursue "diplomacy and deterrence", the White House said.
"The two leaders agreed on the importance of continuing to pursue diplomacy and deterrence in response to Russia's military buildup on Ukraine's borders," according to a readout of the roughly 50-minute call.
With Western fears growing that Russia is about to invade the ex-Soviet state, the White House added that Biden "made clear that the United States would respond swiftly and decisively, together with its allies and partners, to any further Russian aggression against Ukraine."
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6:59pm Paris time
Putin determined to recreate entity that matches the former USSR, security expert says
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “obsessed” with the need to recreate an entity that matches the former Soviet Union and “nothing is really going to deter him from that”, security and intelligence expert Anthony Glees said to FRANCE 24.
“If [Putin] can get it by bullying, and frightening, and threatening, and intimidating, then he will do that,” Glees said. “But if he can’t get it that way … he’s reached the point of no return. One way or another, he has got to do something now.
“That is an extremely grave, extremely serious situation.”
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6:16pm Paris time
Ukraine receives anti-aircraft systems from Lithuania, following ammunition delivery from US
Ukraine on Sunday received a consignment of Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems and ammunition by plane from Lithuania, the defence ministry in Kyiv said.
Earlier on Sunday two other planes delivered about 180 tonnes of ammunition from the United States, Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said. Ukraine had so far received almost 1,500 tonnes of ammunition delivered on 17 flights, he said on Twitter.
Military officials say Ukraine has significantly strengthened its armed forces with the help of allies, equipping the army, in particular, with US and British anti-tank systems and Turkish drones.
The United States and allies say Russia could invade Ukraine at any moment. Russia, which has more than 100,000 troops massed near Ukraine, denies having any such plan.
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5:11pm Paris time
West, Russia in 'information war' amid Moscow's troop buildup near Ukraine
The West and Russia are trading accusations in an "information war" over who is responsible for tensions amid Moscow's buildup of more than 100,000 troops near its border with Ukraine. FRANCE 24's chief foreign editor Rob Parsons explains.
“NATO, the United States, the UK, everybody is putting the accent on the fact that it is Russia that is causing the destabilization at the moment,” Parsons said.
“The Russians will say: ‘hysteria’. ‘This is propaganda’, the line by Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister. They will say, as his spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, that ‘this is Anglo-Saxons needing a war’”.
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5:03pm Paris time
Poland preparing for possible influx of refugees from Ukraine if Russia attacks
Poland is preparing for "various scenarios" for a possible influx of refugees if Russia were to attack Ukraine, Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said on Sunday.
Washington has said Russia, which has more than 100,000 troops massed near Ukraine, could invade at any moment. Moscow denies having any such plans.
"In connection with the situation in Ukraine we are preparing for various scenarios. One of them is regional preparations related to a possible influx of refugees from Ukraine," Kaminski said in a tweet published Sunday.
The mayor of the eastern Polish town of Ciechanow said on Saturday that he was asked by his regional government to prepare accommodation for possible refugees.
"We were asked to indicate the list of accommodation facilities for refugees, the number of people it would be possible to accommodate, the costs involved and the time for adaptation of buildings with a recommendation of up to 48 hours," Krzysztof Kosinski tweeted.
Poland is home to between 1 and 2 million Ukrainians, many of whom came to the country to work.
In late January, Poland's Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wasik said Poland was bracing for up to 1 million Ukrainian migrants.
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4:23pm Paris time
Ukraine advises airlines to avoid routes over Black Sea due to Russian naval drills
Ukraine on Sunday advised airlines to avoid flying over the open waters of the Black Sea from Monday to Saturday due to Russian naval exercises taking place there.
More than 30 Russian ships have started training exercises near the Crimea peninsula as part of wider navy drills, RIA news agency reported on Saturday.
"From tomorrow, airlines are advised not to fly ... over this area, and to plan optimal routes in advance, taking into account the current situation," Ukraine's state air traffic service said.
It said the airspace over the territory of Ukraine remained open.
A senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday that Ukraine sees no point closing its airspace in response to Moscow's troop buildup near its border, as Dutch airline KLM – part of Air France – said it would stop flying to Ukraine and Germany's Lufthansa said it was considering suspending flights.
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3:52pm Paris time
Zelensky to speak to Biden 'in coming hours'
Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky is set to speak to US President Joe Biden “in the coming hours”, said Zelensky's press secretary Sergiy Nikiforov.
“In the coming hours, President Volodymyr Zelensky will discuss the security situation and current diplomatic efforts to de-escalate with US President Joe Biden," Nikiforov announced on Facebook.
The latest telephone conversation comes a day after the White House reported there had been no breakthrough during a one-hour phone conversation between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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3:12pm Paris time
White House adviser says US to keep sharing intelligence on Russia's Ukraine actions
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that a Russian invasion could begin any day and the United States will continue to share intelligence with the world to deny Moscow the ability to stage a surprise "false flag" operation to launch an attack.
Sullivan, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union" programme, declined to say whether US intelligence agencies believe that Russia is considering an attack on Wednesday, as some reports suggest.
"We cannot perfectly predict the day, but we have now been saying for some time that we are in the window, and an invasion could begin – a major military action could begin – by Russia in Ukraine any day now. That includes this coming week before the end of the Olympics," Sullivan said.
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2:50pm Paris time
Ukraine says its airspace remains open despite tensions over Russian troop buildup
Ukraine sees no point closing its airspace in response to Moscow's troop buildup, a senior official said on Sunday, as some carriers reviewed their services to the country after the United States warned that Russia could invade at any time.
Dutch airline KLM – part of Air France – said it would stop flying to Ukraine and Germany's Lufthansa said it was considering suspending flights, as a local newspaper, Ukrayinska Pravda, said in an unconfirmed report that the government might discuss the air traffic issue on Sunday.
Two thirds of the 298 passengers killed when Malaysia Airlines MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were Dutch citizens.
Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry said airlines were continuing to operate "without any restrictions".
It also said it was ready to provide additional financial guarantees to support local airlines, many of which use leased planes, after one Ukrainian carrier, SkyUp, said it had to divert a flight after the plane's owner barred it from entering Ukrainian airspace.
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1:54pm Paris time
Germany's vice chancellor says Europe may be on the verge of war
Germany's vice chancellor and economics minister, Robert Habeck, said on Sunday that Europe may be on the verge of war.
Speaking in an interview with broadcaster RTL/NTV, Habeck, without elaborating, pointed to large armed forces facing each other.
"We may be on the verge of war in Europe," he said.
"It is absolutely oppressive and threatening," he added.
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1:40pm Paris time
Germany's Scholz threatens 'heavy consequences' if Russia invades
The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will tell President Vladimir Putin at a meeting this week that Russia willface "heavy consequences" if it attacks Ukraine but Berlin does not expect concrete results from the discussions, a government source said on Sunday.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz travels to Kyiv on Monday to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and to Moscow on Tuesday to meet Putin as part of diplomatic efforts to ease tensions.
"The chancellor will make clear that any attack on Ukraine will have heavy consequences ... and that one should notunderestimate the unity between the European Union, United States and Britain," the German government source said.
Scholz would tell Putin the troop buildup could "only be interpreted as a threat", the source told a briefing with journalists, adding: "I do not expect concrete results but these direct talks are important."
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1:30pm Paris time
Ukraine vows to keep airspace open despite Russia threat
Ukraine on Sunday vowed to keep its airspace open to international travel despite Western warnings that Russian troops conducting drills near its borders could invade at any point.
"The airspace over Ukraine remains open and the state is working on preempting risks for airlines," Ukraine's infrastructure ministry said a day after the Dutch carrier KLM became the first major airline to suspend flights to the former Soviet state.
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12:45pm Paris time
Pope leads crowds in prayer for peace
Pope Francis on Sunday led crowds in St. Peter's Square in silent prayer for Ukraine, appealing to the consciences of politicians to seek peace.
"The news from Ukraine is very worrying," said Francis, who has made many appeals for peace in Ukraine and last month led an international day of prayer for peace.
"I entrust every effort for peace to the intercession of the Virgin Mary and the consciences of responsible politicians," he told thousands of people in the square for his weekly blessing and message.
"Let us pray in silence," he said. The crowd went quiet for about half a minute.
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11:10am Paris time
Russia 'doesn't give a shit' about sanctions risk, ambassador says
Moscow "doesn't give a shit" about the risk of Western sanctions if it were to invade Ukraine, Russia's outspoken ambassador to Sweden told a Swedish newspaper.
"Excuse my language, but we don't give a shit about all their sanctions", Viktor Tatarintsev told the Aftonbladet newspaper in an interview posted on its website late Saturday.
"We have already had so many sanctions and in that sense they've had a positive effect on our economy and agriculture," said the veteran diplomat, who speaks fluent Swedish and has been posted to the Scandinavian country four times.
"We are more self-sufficient and have been able to increase our exports. We have no Italian or Swiss cheeses, but we've learned to make just as good Russian cheeses using Italian and Swiss recipes", he said.
"New sanctions are nothing positive but not as bad as the West makes it sound", he added.
Tatarintsev accused the West of not understanding the Russian mentality.
"The more the West pushes Russia, the stronger the Russian response will be," he said.
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10:45am Paris time
UK Defence Secretary says 'whiff of Munich' in Russia standoff
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has compared Western diplomatic efforts to head off a Russian invasion of Ukraine to the appeasement of Nazi Germany ahead of World War II.
Wallace told the Sunday Times that Russian President Vladimir Putin could send his massed troops into Ukraine "at any time" and suggested unnamed Western countries were not being tough enough with Moscow.
"It may be that he [Putin] just switches off his tanks and we all go home but there is a whiff of Munich in the air from some in the West," Wallace said.
The 1938 Munich Agreement handed Nazi Germany parts of Czechoslovakia in a failed bid to head off major conflict in Europe.
"The worrying thing is that despite the massive amount of increased diplomacy, that military build-up has continued. It has not paused, it has continued," Wallace said.
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8:45am Paris time
For Ukrainians 'things have suddenly got a lot more real'
“A third of civilians responded to one opinion poll saying they would be ready to take up arms against any invading Russian force,” FRANCE 24 correspondent Gulliver Cragg reported from Kyiv in the video below.
“In a lot of Ukrainians’ minds, things have suddenly got a lot more real, with the way these Western embassy workers are being evacuated and also the fact that several countries pulled their representatives out of the OSCE’s observation mission in Donbas where the war has been going on for eight years now in eastern Ukraine,” Cragg continued. “Those observers will not now be able to function properly, so that’s something that also worries Ukrainians a lot.”
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7:45am Paris time
US OSCE staff start pullout from Donetsk
US staff at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) started to withdraw by car from the rebel-held city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, a Reuters witness said.
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7:30am Paris time
Russia says warship chases US sub, Washington denies it
A Russian anti-submarine destroyer chased off a US submarine near the Kuril Islands, forcing it to leave the country's territorial waters, Moscow said Saturday, amid rising tensions over Ukraine.The US military denied the account.
Russia's defence ministry said that during planned military drills the Marshal Shaposhnikov destroyer had detected a US Navy Virginia-class submarine in Russian territorial waters near the Kuril Islands in the northern Pacific.
When the submarine ignored demands to surface, the crew of the frigate "used appropriate means" and the US submarine left at full speed, the ministry said, without providing further details.
The ministry said it had summoned the US defence attache in Moscow over the incident.
"In connection with the violation by the US Navy submarine of the state border of the Russian Federation, the defence attache at the US embassy in Moscow was summoned to the Russian defence ministry", the defence ministry said.
The statement from the US military, however, said: "There is no truth to the Russian claims of our operations in their territorial waters."
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7am Paris time
Biden warns Putin invading Ukraine would bring 'severe costs'
"If Russia undertakes a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States together with our allies and partners will respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs on Russia," Biden told Putin, according to the White House.
While the United States was prepared to engage in diplomacy, "we are equally prepared for other scenarios," Biden said, as the two nations stare down one of the gravest crises in East-West relations since the Cold War.
The Biden-Putin talks were "professional and substantive," lasting just over an hour, but they produced "no fundamental change" in dynamics, a senior US official told reporters.
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7am Paris time
Blinken says Ukraine embassy drawdown prudent
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday the risk of Russian military action in Ukraine is high and imminent enough to justify the departure of much of the staff at US embassy in Kyiv, which the State Department announced earlier.
"We ordered the departure of most of the Americans still at the US embassy in Kyiv. The risk of Russian military action is high enough and the threat is imminent enough that this is the prudent thing to do," Blinken told a news conference in Honolulu.
Most embassy staff were ordered to leave Ukraine immediately due to the threat of an invasion by Russia, with the department saying it appeared increasingly likely that the situation headed towards "some kind of active conflict."
This added to the State Department's call earlier this week for US citizens to leave Ukraine immediately.
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7am Paris time
Australia evacuates final Ukraine embassy staff
Australia has directed all remaining embassy staff in Kyiv to evacuate, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Sunday, as Russia continued to build up troops on its border with Ukraine.
The evacuation follows similar announcements from the United States and Canada, and comes after a frenzy of telephone diplomacy failed to ease mounting regional tensions Saturday.
Morrison said Australia would shift its operations to Lviv, a city close to Ukraine's border with Poland that is about 540 kilometres (336 miles) east of Kyiv.
He said the three remaining staff in Kyiv had been supporting "the many Australians [in Ukraine], many of whom are dual citizens".
"The situation, as you are all hearing, is deteriorating, and is reaching a very dangerous stage," he said.
While decrying "the autocratic, unilateral actions of Russia", the prime minister also pivoted back to regional politics, criticising China for "remaining chillingly silent on Russian troops amassing on the Ukrainian border".
(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and REUTERS)
