Putin, Biden begin high-stakes phone call on Ukraine crisis
CTV
With the risk of war looming larger, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden held a high-stakes telephone call Saturday as a tense world watched and worried that an invasion of Ukraine could begin within days.
Before talking to Biden, Putin had a telephone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with him in Moscow earlier in the week to try to resolve the biggest security crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. A Kremlin summary of the call suggested that little progress was made toward cooling down the tensions.
In a sign that American officials were getting ready for a worst-case scenario, the United States announced plans to evacuate its embassy in the Ukrainian capital, and Britain joined other European nations in urging its citizens to leave Ukraine.
Russia has massed well over 100,000 troops near the Ukraine border and has sent troops to exercises in neighboring Belarus, but denies that it intends to launch an offensive against Ukraine.
The timing of any possible Russian military action remained a key question.
A federal gun case against U.S. President Joe Biden's son Hunter opened Monday with jury selection, following the collapse of a plea deal that would have avoided the spectacle of a trial so close the 2024 election. First lady Jill Biden was seated in the front row of the courtroom, in a show of support for her son.
United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told a gathering of top security officials Saturday that war with China was neither imminent nor unavoidable, despite rapidly escalating tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, stressing the importance of renewed dialogue between him and his Chinese counterpart in avoiding "miscalculations and misunderstandings."