White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced in a statement late Sunday that President Joe Biden “accepted in principle a meeting” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, a week after Biden completely ignored a personal invitation to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Putin meeting, Psaki claimed, would occur “if an invasion hasn’t happened.”
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 after the fall of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Putin announced the illegal colonization of Ukraine’s Crimea region in March 2014 and extensive evidence has revealed Russian backing, including arming, of pro-Russia separatists in eastern Donbas, Ukraine. That support resulted in the separatists blasting a commercial airliner out of the sky, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in July 2014, according to Dutch and Australian investigations of the incident.
Biden was vice president at the time of the start of the current Russian invasion.
Psaki’s statement did not mention the fact that Russia already invaded Ukraine.
“We are always ready for diplomacy. We are also ready to impose swift and severe consequences should Russia instead choose war,” Psaki’s statement erad. “And currently, Russia appears to be continuing preparations for a full-scale assault on Ukraine very soon.”
The Kremlin appeared to reject Biden’s alleged agreement to meet Putin on Monday. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “no concrete plans” for such a meeting exist and that, as far as Russia was informed, Moscow-Washington conversations would be held at the foreign minister level.
We proceed from the fact that [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov is likely to meet with his US counterpart [Anthony Blinken] this week. We also do not exclude contacts between the ministers of Russia and France,” Peskov said.
The spokesman did statement that his government did “not rule it out.”
“[I]f necessary, of course, the presidents of Russia and the United States can at any time decide on contacts either by phone or in person. That will be their decision,” Peskov said, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
Psaki’s claim that Biden sought to meet Putin to discuss Ukraine is especially bizarre in light of the White House ignoring a similar personal request from Zelensky to Biden. In a phone conversation on February 13, Zelensky asked Biden to visit Kyiv as soon as possible as a mode of showing the world that Ukraine was not in the “imminent” danger that the Biden administration continues to insist exists in the city. Kyiv is hundreds of miles from the eastern border where the Donbas war rages and does not, at press time, show any indication of collapsing into a state of war.
“I am convinced that your arrival in Kyiv in the coming days, which are crucial for stabilizing the situation, will be a powerful signal and contribute to de-escalation,” Zelensky told Biden, according to the office of the president of Ukraine.
The White House readout of the call did not mention that Zelensky invited Biden to Kyiv and Biden has not mentioned the invite in public at any time. Asked about any trips in the near future last week, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre replied, “I don’t have any updates on any travel for this president.”
CNN quoted anonymous alleged “U.S. officials” following the phone call who said such a trip was “extremely unlikely.”
Biden has repeatedly snubbed invitations to meet with Zelensky and, on at least one occasion, overtly chose to meet Putin – the head of state of a major American rival state – over the president of an allied nation.
In June, an infuriated Zelensky responded to Biden announcing that America would lift sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project – which would freeze Ukraine out of the western European market and make Germany and other western European states dependent on Russian gas – by picking up the phone and ranting to journalists from the Washington, DC, outlet Axios. The tirade, as published by the news outlet, included a demand that Biden meet with Zelensky before any meeting with Putin to understand why lifting sanctions on Nord Stream 2 was essentially akin to funding another invasion of Ukraine.
“As the guarantor of the Constitution of Ukraine, I myself am ready to defend Ukraine at any moment and at any spot of the planet, I am ready to meet with him and discuss all those details before his meeting,” Zelensky told Axios, referring to Biden.
Biden ignored Zelensky and met with Putin in Geneva, Switzerland, resulting in no significant progress on any major issue between the two countries. The White House agreed to invite Zelensky to the White House later in the summer, but failed to fulfill that promise.
President Joe Biden holds a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Thursday, December 30, 2021, at his private residence in Wilmington, Delaware. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
When the White House finally got around to hosting Zelensky, Biden harangued the Ukrainian president about “climate dialogue” and demanded Kyiv focus on green energy rather than significantly discussing the ongoing Russian invasion of that country.
Western governments have redirected much of their foreign policy attention in the past month to the Biden administration’s loud claims that Russia will “imminently” invade Ukraine, apparently in addition to the ongoing, nearly decade-long invasion currently occurring. The current war panic began after Biden appeared to approve of a small invasion of the country during remarks at a press conference in January, where he implied the United States would not intervene in the event of a “minor incursion.” Biden did not offer an distinction between a “minor incursion” and a meaningful invasion.
Zelensky has repeatedly expressed frustration with the Biden administration and other Western governments in the past month for their panic, blaming it for a nearly $500-million loss in foreign investment last month.
“I mentioned this to President Biden … we need to stabilize the economy of our country because of those signals which say that tomorrow there will be war,” Zelensky told reporters in January, “because these signals were sent by even leaders of the respected countries, sometimes they are not even using diplomatic language! They are saying, ‘Tomorrow is the war.’”
“If they want to know what the situation is, they can come to Kyiv. Do we have tanks on the street? No,” he continued. “The feeling is, if you’re not here, the feeling is … the image that mass media create is that we have troops on the roads, we have mobilization, people are leaving for places – that’s not the case.”
In a speech on Saturday in Munich, Zelensky excoriated Western states, naming former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in particular, for “selfishness, self-confidence, irresponsibility,” and “indifference.”
“Three years ago, it was here that Angela Merkel said: ‘Who will pick up the wreckage of the world order? Only all of us, together.’ The audience gave a standing ovation,” Zelensky noted. “But, unfortunately, the collective applause did not grow into collective action. And now, when the world is talking about the threat of a great war, the question arises: is there anything left to pick up?”
Zelensky observed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has now lasted longer than World War II.
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