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Ukraine: Biden speaks to key Europe allies
Biden’s bid to drive a wedge between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine war will be a key topic of discussion this week when Biden travels to Brussels for talks with European leaders.
President Joe Biden spoke by phone with key European allies on Monday ahead of attending Nato and EU summits, followed by a trip to Poland, in a crucial week for the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The White House said Biden hosted the call with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson “to discuss their coordinated responses to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine”.
Biden’s bid to drive a wedge between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine war will be a key topic of discussion this week when Biden travels to Brussels for talks with European leaders.
The United States and its allies will discuss providing weaponry and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and the Ukrainian refugee crisis at an extraordinary Nato summit, meeting of the Group of Seven economies, and a European Council summit on Thursday.
But after his inconclusive talks with Chinese president on Friday, Biden also plans to coordinate a response to Beijing if it provides material support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with European leaders, US administration officials say.
“During his visit to Brussels, President Biden will coordinate with our EU partners on all aspects of our response to President Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine, and this includes the concerns we share with the EU if China provides material support to Russia,” said a senior Biden administration official.
The success of close coordination on economic sanctions, export controls and trade measures imposed on Russia have brought Europe and the United States closer together, a second senior US official said. These democratic leaders have growing concerns about China’s potential role in the conflict.
“The challenges that we face ... are the same ones the Europeans face. And so I really do think that there is ... an inflection point here in many ways,” the second official said.
European nations and the US have been working behind the scenes for weeks to try to convince Chinese officials not to back Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special operation”, and to push Putin for a cease fire. The war has killed hundreds of civilians, destroyed towns and displaced millions.
Russia’s war is about to enter its second month and US and Western allies have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, crippling the ruble and stock market, while going after President Vladimir Putin’s wealthy supporters.
Russia tells US envoy ‘ties close to rupture’
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Monday it had summoned US Ambassador John Sullivan to tell him that remarks by President Joe Biden about Russian President Vladimir Putin had pushed bilateral ties to the brink of collapse.
President Biden said last week that Putin was a “war criminal” for sending tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.
“Such statements from the American president, unworthy of a statesman of such high rank, put Russian-American relations on the verge of rupture,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Kremlin earlier described the comments as “personal insults” against Putin.
Russian court bans Instagram, Facebook
A Moscow court on Monday banned Facebook and Instagram as “extremist” organisations, after authorities accused US tech giant Meta of tolerating “Russophobia” during the conflict in Ukraine. The Tverskoi district court said it had agreed to a request from prosecutors for the two social media platforms to be banned for “carrying out extremist activities”, but that Meta’s WhatsApp messenger service would not be prohibited because it is not a public platform.
