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Politico (20 February 2022)

BY DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, GIORGIO LEALI AND SUZANNE LYNCH

The Kremlin on Sunday used a telephone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron to broadcast an array of provocative, unproven allegations of belligerence by Ukraine and NATO countries, insisting the West was “pushing Kyiv towards a military solution to the so-called Donbass problem.”

Moscow’s unfounded claims, put forward while Russia has mobilized more than 100,000 troops and sophisticated weapons on the Ukrainian border, sharply raised the danger that Putin might use fabricated charges to justify a military attack. 

But in a second Macron-Putin call, held hours after the first, after the French president had also spoken with his American counterpart Joe Biden, the Kremlin and Biden “in principle” agreed to hold a bilateral summit, followed by a meeting with all relevant parties, on the security situation in Europe, according to the Elysée. The Kremlin did not immediately publish its own readout of the second call or confirm Putin had agreed to the summit.

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