U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday assured his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that America and its NATO allies will resolutely counter any attempts by Russia to invade eastern Ukraine. Biden made this committment during his telephonic conversation with President Zelensky.
"He (Biden) reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the White House said in a statement. President Biden, after his new year's eve telephonic conversation with President Putin, had told reporters that America will impose crippling economic sanctions on Russia in the event of its invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. will also hold official-level talks with Russia on January 10 in Geneva to advance the resolution according to the principles of the Minsk Resolution.
This telephonic conversation comes almost a month after the December 7 virtual meeting between the U.S. and Russian Presidents during which both sides had put respective demands from the other in order to deescalate the border tensions.
On November 13, 2021, Ukrainian President had claimed that Russia had amassed over 100000 of its troops along its border which has been interpreted by political commentators as a sign of imminent invasion.
Russia has threatened a complete reverence of ties with the West unless the U.S. and its allies provide legal assurance that Ukraine will not be formally inducted in NATO. Putin further demanded withdrawal of foreign NATO troops from Poland and especially Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania as the Baltic states are located at Russia’s western borders. Russia views Ukraine and the Black Sea within its own sphere of geopolitical influence and hence wants a veto over NATO presence in the region.
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The Ukrainian President has, however, left no uncertainty around his country’s strategic objectives as he views NATO as a net security provider against acts of aggression by Russia such as its invasion and annexation of Crimea back in 2014. Back in February 2019, the then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a new constitutional amendment which made the country’s membership of NATO a security imperative. The current Ukrainian President approved a new National Security Strategy in September 2020 which, in no uncertain words, pinpointed Russia as a serial aggressor and has outlined a security policy which sees Ukraine band-wagoning NATO to secure its borders.
