Good News: Biden Tentatively Agrees To Meet Putin
If I was a praying man, I'd pray to stop the rush to war.
I am confident that Pres. Biden will do everything he can to deter the Russian madman (read this. Like his buddy Trump Putin may literally be nuts).
Of course, there is only so much Biden can do although I think he can follow the JFK model on Cuba.
He can tell Putin that he won’t announce it publicly but he and the allies have agreed that Ukraine will not be joining NATO. Period. This is the model JFK employed when he told Khrushchev that he would remove US missiles from Turkey, as the Soviets demanded, in exchange for the Soviet missiles being removed from Cuba, but it would be done quietly. Neither side got bragging rights but each side gave the other what it said it wanted. And war was avoided.
This is a good model for Biden. The fly in the ointment could be that Khrushchev and Kennedy were in agreement that war was insane and should be avoided. Putin clearly is not cut from that cloth although Biden is. Nevertheless, it is worth a try.
From NY Times. Ukraine Live Updates: France Pushes for Biden-Putin Meeting
President Biden has “agreed in principle” to meet the Russian leader if there is no invasion. Mr. Biden has stepped up his warnings about Moscow’s plans after seeing evidence that an attack on Ukraine was imminent.
RIGHT NOW
President Biden agreed ‘in principle’ to meet with Putin to discuss the Ukraine crisis.
A day of last-minute diplomacy by French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday appeared to give some new hope for a peaceful resolution over Ukraine as White House officials said President Biden would be willing to consider direct talks with his Russian counterpart as long as Russia does not invade.
White House officials said a possible summit between Mr. Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would only be held after meetings between the foreign ministers of the two countries, which are tentatively scheduled for later this week.
One senior White House official said there were no plans for either the format or timing of a meeting between the two leaders. Another official called it all completely notional, and said that all evidence suggests Russia still intends to invade Ukraine in the coming days. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
But the possibility of another diplomatic overture, which came after Mr. Macron spoke by telephone Sunday morning with Mr. Putin and later called Mr. Biden, was an indication that Mr. Biden and America’s European allies had not yet given up on convincing Mr. Putin that the costs of an invasion were too high.
In a statement from the White House, Jen Psaki, the press secretary, said that Mr. Biden had accepted the idea of talks with Mr. Putin “in principle” and said that the United States remains committed to pursuing diplomacy “until the moment an invasion begins.”
“We are also ready to impose swift and severe consequences should Russia instead choose war,” she wrote in the statement. “And currently, Russia appears to be continuing preparations for a full-scale assault on Ukraine very soon.”
Mr. Macron’s outreach to Russia began with the Sunday morning telephone call with Mr. Putin, during which the two leaders agreed on “the need to prioritize a diplomatic solution to the current crisis” and to secure a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine in the coming hours, according to a statement from Mr. Macron’s office.
The statement added that, “if the conditions are met,” a diplomatic path should allow for “a meeting at the highest level in order to define a new peace and security order in Europe.”
Mr. Macron later talked to Mr. Biden by telephone.
A second statement from Mr. Macron’s office said that the French president had proposed a summit between Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin “and then with relevant stakeholders to discuss security and strategic stability in Europe.”
But by late Sunday night, it remained unclear just how significant the new efforts to avert a major war in Europe had been.