Moscow. New York Times: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was holding an unscheduled meeting of his Security Council on Monday, as the Kremlin said that “tensions are rising” and the U.S. continued warnings that his nation stands poised to attack Ukraine.
Mr. Putin held a second call with President Emmanuel Macron of France at 1 a.m. Moscow time on Monday morning, after speaking with the French leader on Sunday, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters.
Mr. Macron proposed a summit between President Biden and Mr. Putin, the French presidency said, but Mr. Peskov did not confirm that preparations for such a meeting had begun.
“It’s clear that tensions are rising,” Mr. Peskov said. “It’s too early to talk about concrete plans for organizing any summits.”
At Monday’s extraordinary meeting of the Security Council, Mr. Putin delivered a speech on the tensions.
“We must decide together what we will do next and how we must act in the situation that has emerged today,” Mr. Putin said.
Mr. Putin said the meeting would also consider further steps related to his demands for “security guarantees” from the West, such as a rollback of the NATO presence in Eastern Europe and a legally binding pledge barring Ukraine from ever joining the alliance.
“For us, this is task No. 1.,” Mr. Putin said. “It is a priority for our country to assure its security and conditions for its development.”
Mr. Putin has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, and insists that Moscow’s military buildup is a reaction to Ukraine’s deepening partnership with the alliance. Essentially, he appears intent on winding back the clock 30 years, to just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The meeting came a day after the latest round of high-stakes diplomacy by Mr. Macron, which had appeared to give some new hope for a peaceful resolution over Ukraine as White House officials said Mr. Biden would be willing to consider direct talks with his Russian counterpart as long as Russia did not invade.
While not confirming plans for a summit, Mr. Peskov noted that Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov was planning to meet with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken this week, and that he may speak to his French counterpart as well. Mr. Lavrov confirmed the meeting.
White House officials said a possible summit between Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin would only be held after meetings between the top diplomats of the two countries, which are tentatively scheduled for later this week
On Monday, the din of impending war grew even louder, as Russian news media broadcast separatist claims of an escalating assault by Ukrainian forces. Ukraine had shelled communications, bridges, a water filtration station and other critical infrastructure targets, and had sent saboteurs behind separatist lines, Russian state television reported from the separatist-held city of Donetsk.
The separatists now needed military assistance from Russia, a separatist spokesman said in an interview with a Russian journalist on YouTube, according the Interfax news agency.
Ukrainian officials insisted their military was not preparing an assault against the separatist republic, and said the separatists were shelling their own territory.
