Blinken cancels meeting with Lavrov as Russia begins invasion of Ukraine

Europe, News, US February 24, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced the cancellation of a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva this week after Putin recognized two separatist regions in Ukraine and approves military intervention.

Blinken said in a joint press briefing with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, “Now that we see the invasion is beginning and Russia has made clear its wholesale rejection of diplomacy, it does not make sense to go forward with that meeting at this time.

Blinken’s announcement came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged the independence of two separatist regions in Ukraine and stated that he would send “peacekeeping” troops there.

U.S. Secretary Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov had a scheduled meeting in Geneva on February 24, to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine.

According to the U.S. secretary of state, he had agreed to meet with Lavrov, only if Russia did not invade Ukraine. Blinken said he was still committed to diplomacy “if Moscow’s approach changes” and would do anything he could “to avert an even worse-case scenario, an all-out assault on all of Ukraine, including its capital.”

“If Moscow’s approach changes. We remain, I remain, very much prepared to engage… But we will not allow Russia to claim the pretense of diplomacy at the same time it accelerates its march down the path of conflict and war,” Blinken added.

U.S. Secretary of State Blinken highlighted that the U.S. is “expanding existing sanctions on Russian sovereign debt”. Blinken added, “We’ve already prohibited U.S. financial institutions from trading in Russian sovereign debt in the primary market; now we’re extending that prohibition to the secondary market. These prohibitions will cut off the Russian Government from a key avenue by which it raises capital to fund its priorities and will increase future financing costs. They also deny Russia access to key U.S. markets and investors.”

According to the U.S. Department of State release, Secretary Blinken said: “President Putin’s deeply disturbing speech yesterday and his statements today make clear to the world how he views Ukraine: not as a sovereign nation with the right to territorial integrity and independence, but rather as a creation of Russia, and therefore subordinate to Russia. It’s a completely false assertion that ignores history, international law, and the tens of millions of patriotic Ukrainians who are proud citizens of a free and independent Ukraine.”

“Now that we’ve heard it directly from President Putin himself, it confirms what we’ve been saying: that he did not send more than 150,000 troops to the Ukrainian border because of benign military exercises, or to respond to threatened aggression from Ukraine, or to stop a fabricated genocide by Ukraine, or any other manufactured reason. His plan all along has been to invade Ukraine; to control Ukraine and its people; to destroy Ukraine’s democracy, which offers a stark contrast to the autocracy that he leads; to reclaim Ukraine as a part of Russia,” Blinken added.

*^{A Russian multiple rocket launcher is fired during military drills near Orenburg, Russia, in December 2021. (Image Credit: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/EPA)}*

While Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated that his country had no plans to evacuate from Mariupol and Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine as ordered by the Russian president. Kuleba added that Ukraine has two plans, “Plan A is to utilize every tool of diplomacy to deter Russia and prevent further escalation. And if that fails, plan B is to fight for every inch of our land, in every city and every village — to fight until we win, of course.”

The cancellation of the meeting highlights that the U.S. administration does not believe that Russia is serious about seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Last week, U.S. Department of State spokesperson Ned Price said “If they do invade in the coming days, it will make clear they were never serious about diplomacy.”