Ukraine's Border Crisis With Russia, US Secretary Of State Antony Blinken: Diplomatic Path Remains Open

JAKARTA - The United States says diplomacy can still resolve the impasse with Moscow over Ukraine, but adds that the risk of a Russian invasion is high enough to pull embassy staff out of Kyiv.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke after talks on Saturday with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts, following Washington's warning that Russia's military, which has more than 100,000 troops assembled near Ukraine, could strike at any moment. Moscow denies having any such plans.

A flurry of meetings and phone calls in recent days between high-ranking Western and Russian officials have yielded no sign of a breakthrough to resolve weeks of escalating tensions.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin the day after Tuesday, but a German source said Berlin did not expect concrete results from the talks.

The source said Chancellor Scholz would explain Western countries were united, with any aggression triggering "painful and severe sanctions" against Russia.

"The diplomatic road remains open. The way Moscow shows that it wants to go down that path is simple. It should be reduced, rather than increased," Secretary of State Blinken said after his meeting on the US Pacific Islands in Hawaii, citing Reuters on February 13.

Meanwhile, in an hour-long phone call on Saturday, US President Joe Biden told President Putin the West would respond decisively to any invasion of Ukraine, adding such a move would result in widespread suffering and isolate Moscow.

A senior official in President Biden's administration said the call was substantive but there was no fundamental change.

Separately, the Kremlin said President Putin told President Biden Washington had failed to consider Russia's main concerns and had not received substantial answers to key elements of its security demands.

President Putin wants guarantees from the United States and NATO that include blocking Ukraine's entry into NATO, refraining from deploying missiles near Russia's borders, and reducing NATO's military infrastructure in Europe to 1997 levels.

Washington regards many of the proposals as non-starters, but has pushed the Kremlin to discuss them together with Washington and its European allies.

To note, Washington, along with its Western allies and many other countries, ordered most of its embassy staff on Saturday to leave Ukraine immediately due to the threat of invasion.

"We ordered the departure of most of the Americans who are still at the US embassy in Kyiv. The risk of Russian military action is high and the threat is imminent so this is a wise thing to do," Foreign Minister Blinken said.

Many of Washington's European allies and others have also reduced or evacuated staff from their Kyiv missions, urging citizens to leave or avoid travel to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, US staff at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) began departing by car from the rebel-held city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, a Reuters witness said.

The OSCE conducts operations in Ukraine, including a civilian monitoring mission in the self-proclaimed Russian-backed separatist republic in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where the war that erupted in 2014 has killed more than 14,000 people.