Putin seeks Ukraine promise

The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin will seek binding guarantees precluding Nato’s expansion to Ukraine during a planned call with United States President Joe Biden, while the Ukrainian defence minister has warned that Russia could invade his country next month.

With tensions between Russia and the West escalating, Biden said his Administration was ‘‘putting together what I believe to be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do’’.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and numerous former US diplomats and security officials say Russia’s demand is a non-starter.

‘‘There’s absolutely no way in the world that that Russian position will make any progress,’’ said John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine. More likely, he said, were US assurances that Western military assistance to Ukraine be for defensive purposes only.

Ukraine, the US and other Western allies are increasingly concerned that a Russian troop buildup near the Ukrainian border could signal Moscow’s intention

to invade. The US has threatened the Kremlin with the toughest sanctions yet if it launches an attack, while Russia has warned that any presence of Nato troops and weapons on Ukrainian soil would cross a ‘‘red line’’.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said the number of Russian troops near Ukraine and in Russian-annexed Crimea was estimated at 94,300, warning that a ‘‘large-scale escalation’’ was possible in January.

A US intelligence report has cited recent artillery, troop and materiel movements near Ukraine’s border in saying that Russia is planning for the possibility of a military offensive with 175,000 troops early next year.

Ukraine has pushed to join Nato, which has held out the promise of membership but hasn’t set a timeline.

Russia and Ukraine have remained locked in a tense tug-ofwar after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, known as the Donbas. More than 14,000 people have died in the fighting.

Reznikov said an escalation was ‘‘a probable scenario’’. He said Ukraine would not do anything to provoke Russia but was prepared to respond in case of an attack.