Russian Prez says 'no prospects' for peace plan to end Ukraine conflict

Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that he no longer felt that a key 2015 plan agreed with France, Germany and Kyiv would be able to resolve Ukraine's separatist conflict.

"We understand that there are no prospects" for the implementation of the 2015 Minsk peace accords, agreed in the capital of Belarus to end fighting between Ukraine's army and pro-Moscow rebels in the east of the country, Putin told his security council.

Putin warned that Western powers were using Moscow's feud with Ukraine to threaten Russia's own security and said he was considering recognising the independence of two breakaway Russian-backed regions.

Openly backing the separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine would effectively put to an end an already shaky peace plan and dramatically increase the likelihood of an all-out Russian invasion.

Moscow appeared to be already laying the groundwork for such an operation by claiming — to furious Kyiv denials — that its forces had intercepted and killed five Ukrainian saboteurs who infiltrated Russian territory and accusing Ukraine of shelling a border post.

The Kremlin has dispatched a huge force to Ukraine's border — US intelligence says it is more than 150,000-strong and poised to attack.

Meanwhile, the US and Russian Presidents tentatively agreed to meet in a last-ditch effort to stave off a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, even as sustained shelling continued on Monday in a conflict in eastern Ukraine that Western powers fear could provide the spark for a broader war.

If Russia invades, as the US warns Moscow has already decided to do, the meeting will be off. Still, the prospect of a face-to-face summit resuscitated hopes that diplomacy could prevent a devastating conflict, which would result in massive casualties and huge economic damage in Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy.

Russia has massed an estimated 150,000 troops on three sides of Ukraine the biggest such buildup since the Cold War. And Western officials have warned that Putin is now merely looking for a pretext to invade the country, a western-looking democracy that has defied Moscow's attempts to pull it back into its orbit.

Moscow denies it has any plans to attack but wants Western guarantees that NATO won't allow Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to join as members. It has also demanded the alliance halt weapons deployments to Ukraine and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe demands flatly rejected by the West.

With the prospect of war looming, French President Emmanuel Macron scrambled to broker a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Putin.

Macron's office said both leaders had accepted the principle of such a summit, to be followed by a broader meeting that would include other relevant stakeholders to discuss security and strategic stability in Europe.

The language from Moscow and Washington was more cautious, but neither side denied a meeting is under discussion.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC news that a Russian invasion of its neighbour would be an "extremely violent" operation followed by a brutal occupation.

"It will be a war waged by Russia on the Ukrainian people to repress them, to crush them, to harm them," the White House official said. Sullivan added that the administration has always been ready to talk to avert a war but was also prepared to respond to any attack.

"So when President Macron asked President Biden yesterday if he was prepared in principle to meet with President Putin, if Russia did not invade, of course, President Biden said yes," he said on Monday. "But every indication we see on the ground right now in terms of the disposition of Russian forces is that they are, in fact, getting prepared for a major attack on Ukraine."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that Putin and Biden could meet if they consider it feasible, but emphasised that "it's premature to talk about specific plans for a summit."

Macron's office said that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are set to lay the groundwork for the potential summit when they meet on Thursday. The French leader has been trying to play go-between to avert a new war in Europe, and his announcement followed a flurry of calls by Macron to Putin, Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Even as the diplomacy pressed ahead, there were signs it might not head off a broader conflict. In a particularly dire signal, Russia and its ally Belarus announced on Sunday that they were extending massive war games on Belarus' territory, which could offer a staging ground for an attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, located just 75 kilometres south of the border.

Starting on Thursday, shelling also spiked along the tense line of contact that separates Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland of Donbas. Over 14,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted there in 2014, shortly after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2014 and Moscow-backed separatists hold an enclave in the eastern districts of Lugansk and Donetsk.