WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said this week the U.S. would take a more direct role in diplomacy to address Vladimir Putin’s concerns over Ukraine and Europe, part of a broader effort to dissuade the Russian leader from a destabilizing invasion of Ukraine.
But any negotiations to peacefully resolve Europe’s tangled East-West rivalries will present minefields for the U.S. president.
Administration officials have suggested that the U.S. will press Ukraine to formally cede a measure of autonomy to eastern Ukrainian lands now controlled by Russia-backed separatists who rose up against Kyiv in 2014. An undefined “special status” for those areas was laid out in an ambiguous, European-brokered peace deal in 2015, but it has never taken hold.
