Vladimir Putin has suggested it is still not too late for dialogue over Ukraine, as the world continues to be left guessing whether the Russian president is on the brink of invading his neighbour, or whether his military buildup is a negotiating ploy.
In a meeting in the Kremlin, the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told Putin he believed there was still room for dialogue on Russian requests for a new security deal with the west, which have been made as Russia amassed 140,000 troops around Ukraine’s borders in recent weeks.
“It seems to me that our possibilities are far from being exhausted. They certainly should not continue indefinitely. But at this stage I would suggest that they continue and be intensified,” Lavrov told Putin.
Putin, who has taken to holding meetings with extreme social distancing owing to a fear of contracting Covid, gave his assent from the other end of an extremely long table.
The footage released from the meeting appeared carefully choreographed to send a message about Kremlin thinking.
“We warn against endless conversations on issues that need to be resolved today. Still, as the foreign minister, I should say that there is always a chance,” said Lavrov.
At the same time, a senior Russian diplomat told the Guardian that Russia would be within its rights to “counterattack” against Ukraine if it felt Kyiv was threatening the population of eastern Ukraine.
“We will not invade Ukraine unless we are provoked to do that,” said Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the EU, in an interview in Brussels.
“If the Ukrainians launch an attack against Russia, you shouldn’t be surprised if we counterattack. Or, if they start blatantly killing Russian citizens anywhere – Donbas or wherever,” he said.
Donbas is the region of eastern Ukraine where Russia has armed and funded an insurgency since 2014, and where the Kremlin has handed out hundreds of thousands of Russian passports. In January, US officials briefed journalists on intelligence they claimed showed that Russia was preparing a “false flag” incident that could be used as a pretext for an intervention.
In this context, Chizhov’s words about a Russian response to a Ukrainian attack will sound ominous to western officials, especially as there is no sign Ukraine currently has any desire to attack its much larger and more powerful neighbour.
Russia has massed an estimated 145,000 troops along various stretches of its border with Ukraine, in Belarus where joint military drills are taking place, and in Crimea, annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
US officials said over the weekend that Russia had accelerated plans for an invasion and could launch a full-scale land and air assault as soon as Wednesday.
On Monday, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, announced that the last few US diplomats in the Kyiv embassy would move west to Lviv, “due to the dramatic acceleration in the buildup of Russian forces”.
On Saturday, a senior state department official told reporters that a handful of American diplomats would stay in the capital “to be able to continue working closely with the Ukrainian government and to be able to ensure we’ve got the best possible information for our senior leaders and the president about what’s happening broadly in society”.
The change of mind two days later suggests that US security assessments have darkened still further.
“We don’t take this sort of action without the most thorough deliberation,” the state department spokesperson, Ned Price, said. “We are basing our assessment on what we are seeing on the ground with our own eyes, which is a continued unprovoked Russian buildup on the border with Ukraine, and no accompanying evidence of the de-escalation. It is a distinct possibility, perhaps more real than ever before, that Russia may decide to proceed with military action.”
On Monday night, the state department advised US citizens to “depart immediately” from Belarus and the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, “citing the unusual and concerning Russian military activity” along their borders with Ukraine.
The Pentagon spokesperson, John Kirby, said that Putin “continues to advance his military readiness”. Russian forces around Ukraine, Kirby said, were doing “the things you’d expect one to do if one was planning on a major military action.”
Western diplomatic efforts to avert an invasion continued on Monday, with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Kyiv.
“The sovereignty and territorial independence of Ukraine are non-negotiable,” said Scholz, speaking alongside Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, after a bilateral meeting.
On Tuesday, Scholz will meet Putin in Moscow, a week after France’s Emmanuel Macron also visited both capital cities in an attempt to seek paths for de-escalation. In five hours of one-on-one talks over dinner in the Kremlin, Putin is reported to have spent a long time lecturing Macron on historical Russian grievances.
Putin has claimed that Ukraine joining Nato would inevitably lead to war between Russia and the alliance.
On Monday morning, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, Vadym Prystaiko, said Kyiv may consider giving up its ambition of Nato membership if it would help de-escalate the situation. The foreign ministry quickly said Prystaiko’s words had been taken out of context and other officials also played down the remarks.
While most western officials believe Ukraine has little chance of joining Nato any time soon, they are reluctant to publicly rule out the possibility.
“The Russian government is turning something into a big political issue that isn’t really currently on the agenda,” Scholz said in Kyiv.
After the US warnings of imminent military action, diplomats from numerous countries, including the US, Canada and Australia have evacuated from Kyiv and are running small emergency diplomatic missions from the western city of Lviv.
Many European countries, where there is some scepticism about the US warnings, have decided to keep a diplomatic presence in Kyiv. The British ambassador has also remained in Kyiv, along with a core team.
“It’s a big mistake that some embassies moved to western Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said on Monday. “It’s their decision, but ‘western Ukraine’ doesn’t exist. It’s united Ukraine. If something happens, God forbid, it will happen everywhere.”
In a video released on Monday evening, Zelenskiy said he was declaring Wednesday, the day American officials briefed could be the start of military action, as a day of national unity.
Most scheduled flights to Ukraine continued to operate on Monday after the government announced a $592m (£437m) fund to help keep Ukraine’s airspace open, as some insurers refused to cover aircraft after the US warnings. The Dutch airline KLM has stopped all flights to Ukraine, while Lufthansa has said it is considering a suspension.
The low-cost airline SkyUp, which had to divert a plane to Moldova on Sunday after the company that owned the plane banned it from entering Ukrainian airspace, said it had resumed ticket sales after coming to an agreement with the Ukrainian government.
“Negotiations with insurers have been difficult and our foreign partners continue to regularly assess their own risks and monitor the situation,” the airline said in a statement.
Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called for calm, saying they see the threat on the border but do not believe Russia will launch a full-scale invasion and that the apocalyptic US messaging is only serving to create panic and chaos economic chaos.
“Keep calm. Don’t panic. This is not 2014, Ukraine has become stronger and better organised,” said the interior minister, Denys Monastyrsky, in a video address on Monday.
