Biden ready to meet with Putin ‘any time’ to avoid war in Ukraine, Blinken says
President Joe Biden is willing to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin “at any time” to prevent an invasion of Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday.
During an appearance on CNN‘s “State of the Union,” Blinken said the US “will use every opportunity and every minute we have” to promote diplomacy “until the tanks are actually rolling and the planes are flying.
“President Biden is prepared to engage President Putin at any time, in any format, if that can help prevent a war,” he said.
Blinken added: “I reached out to my Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov, to urge that we meet next week in Europe.
“The plan is still to do that unless Russia invades in the meantime,” he said.
On Sunday, Putin agreed to three-way talks Monday between Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The move came during a 105-minute phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, during which the two leaders clashed over who’s to blame for the rising tensions in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin said Putin pointed to “provocations carried out by the Ukrainian security forces.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who spoke separately with Macron, tweeted that he told the French president about “new provocative shelling” by Russian-backed rebels.
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) accused Biden of responsibility for the escalating crisis, saying that “tragically, Europe is on the verge of war because of the weakness, the fecklessness of — of Joe Biden.”
Cruz pointed to what he called the president’s “surrender and disastrous retreat from Afghanistan,” adding that “as I said back in August, the chances of Russia invading Ukraine have just risen tenfold, the chances of China invading Taiwan had just risen tenfold.”
“We’re seeing the first of those two shoes dropping today because of Biden’s weakness,” he said.
