Ukraine crisis: Russian FM Lavrov urges more talks with West, Germany’s Scholz in Kyiv hoping to calm war threat
- Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has advised President Vladimir Putin to ‘continue and expand’ talks with the West
- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has arrived in Kyiv, due in Moscow Tuesday, hoping to head off ‘critical, dangerous’ threat, demand de-escalation
The statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to signal the Kremlin’s intention to stay on a diplomatic path even though the US has warned that Moscow could invade Ukraine at any moment.
Speaking at the start of a meeting with Putin, Lavrov suggested Moscow should maintain a dialogue with the US and its allies even though they have rejected Russia’s main security demands.
Soon afterward, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu reported that some of Russia’s massive military exercises now under way are already concluded, while others will end later. He did not specify plans for returning troops to their bases, but other officials have said they will go back once the operations are over.
Meanwhile Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday it had been a mistake for some Western countries to move their embassies from Kyiv in fear of a Russian assault.
“It is a big mistake that some embassies – well, this is their decision – are moving to western Ukraine,” he said, after some international missions opened offices in the city of Lviv. “Because there is no western Ukraine, there is Ukraine, it is whole. So if, God forbid, something happens it will be everywhere.”
The US has demanded Russia pull back some 130,000 troops it says Moscow has massed near the border with Ukraine, many as part of the exercises Russia’s Shoigu described.