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Putin Call With Biden Is Prelude to Security Talks, Kremlin Says

Putin sought a phone call with Biden as a prelude to planned security negotiations at the start of the year, the Kremlin said.

Putin Call With Biden Is Prelude to Security Talks, Kremlin Says
Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, left, and U.S. President Joe Biden, center, shake hands at a meeting. (Photographer: Peter Klaunzer/Swiss Federal Office of Foreign Affairs/Bloomberg)

Russian President Vladimir Putin sought a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden as a prelude to negotiations on European security at the start of the year, the Kremlin said.

“The purpose of the call is very clear -- to continue discussing all the issues that were on the agenda” at Dec. 7 talks between the two leaders and before the negotiations in January, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday. “From President Putin’s viewpoint, there is a need for another phone discussion ahead of the start of the negotiations,” he said, without elaborating.

The talks set for 11:30 p.m. in Moscow -- 3.30 p.m. in Washington -- take place amid U.S. and European alarm over a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine as early as next month before the frozen terrain turns to mud in spring. The Kremlin denies any intention to invade its neighbor, while also demanding security guarantees from the West that include a halt to North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion and the withdrawal of NATO forces in Europe to positions they held in 1997.

Russia is in a hurry to gain tangible results from the talks, according to Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political consultancy R.Politik. For Putin, “everything depends on Biden” as the leader who will take Russian concerns seriously and the call aims to press the U.S. president “to give impetus to the negotiations,” she said.

Putin Call With Biden Is Prelude to Security Talks, Kremlin Says

The two sides are committed to entering 2022 with a rush of high-stakes diplomacy after Russia published draft security treaties following the first leaders’ call this month. U.S. and Russian negotiators will meet Jan. 10, two days before a NATO-Russia Council meeting. Top advisers to Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also plan to meet before the NATO-Russia talks.

European leaders have been largely reduced to spectators so far as the U.S. and Russia have bargained over the parameters of talks on the continent’s security. 

By dealing directly again with Biden, Putin is demonstrating “that the world’s most powerful leaders are in constant contact and are deciding the fate of civilization without the involvement of any small players,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy Wednesday about “efforts to peacefully resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine and upcoming diplomatic engagements with Russia,” the State Department said in a statement.

While Russia’s proposals aren’t realistic, the Kremlin was encouraged that the U.S. didn’t reject them out of hand and “Putin wants to talk to Biden in more detail now,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, which advises the Kremlin. “He will tell Biden what Russia is really looking for.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price repeated on Tuesday what’s becoming the standard U.S. response to concern that the Biden administration may cut its own deal with Russia while shortchanging the concerns of Ukraine and European allies. “The principle is inviolable -- nothing about them without them,” he said. 

The late hour in Moscow for the call is “no problem” for Putin, Peskov said, confirming the Kremlin initiated the contact. The White House had already pointedly announced that Biden was holding the call at Putin’s request.

The U.S. remains gravely concerned about the Russian buildup near the Ukrainian border, a senior Biden administration official said Wednesday, and is prepared to provide additional assistance to Ukraine if Russia invades. Biden warned Putin at their last call that Russian aggression would be met with unprecedented economic sanctions and that the U.S. is committed to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The crisis is a repeat of one in the spring, when Putin also massed forces near the border with Ukraine before backing down in April after Biden in a call offered a summit meeting that took place in June.

“The fact that Putin initiated the call may indicate that it’s much more important for him to reach a new level of relations with the West and achieve de-escalation,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, who was a Kremlin political adviser during Putin’s first decade in power until 2011. Still, the Kremlin’s relationship with the West is unstable and “a new ultimatum” from Putin can’t be ruled out, he said.

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