US President Joe Biden plans to tell his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during a telephone conversation on December 30 that Washington will impose new economic sanctions in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Washington Post writes about this with reference to a high-ranking official in the American administration.
According to the source of the newspaper, Biden plans to tell Putin that the United States is ready to act diplomatically, but is also ready to respond to aggression against Ukraine with economic sanctions, strengthening NATO and military assistance to Kiev.
A telephone conversation between the two presidents is scheduled for Thursday, December 30, at 23:30 Moscow time. According to Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov, the conversation will take place at the request of the Russian side.
This conversation will be the second in a month between the two leaders since the online summit on December 7. Then Putin expressed to Biden Russia’s concern about the threats, which, among other things, come from NATO’s eastward expansion. Biden, in turn, shared the concerns of the United States and European countries regarding the situation around Ukraine.
Later, on December 17, the Russian Foreign Ministry published requirements for the United States and NATO to not expand the alliance to the east at the expense of Ukraine and Georgia, not to deploy American nuclear weapons in Europe, as well as to mutually abandon the deployment of medium-range missiles. The United States agreed to consider these proposals, although it called a number of points unacceptable. Negotiations between Russia and the United States, Russia and NATO (in the format of the Russia-NATO Council), Russia and European countries (at the OSCE site) will be held on January 10, 12 and 13, respectively.
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