The Diplomat
US President Joe Biden held a video conference last night with several European leaders to discuss the situation in Ukraine. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was not among them.
According to the White House, “at a time of growing alarm in the United States about the possibility of an imminent Russian attack on Ukraine, Biden will speak with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; the President of the European Council, Charles Michel; French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Polish President Andrzej Duda and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson”.
The conversation, described as a “secure videoconference”, was held from ‘the Situation Room’, the White House Emergency or Crisis Room.
Washington explained that the videoconference was part of “our close coordination with our transatlantic allies and partners in response to Russia’s military build-up on the Ukrainian border”.
The non-inclusion of Pedro Sánchez in the group of European leaders convened by Biden provoked an ironic comment from the PP’s secretary for International Relations, Valentina Martínez Ferro, on her Twitter account, noting: “First real results of Albares’ visit to Washington…”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, travelled to the United States last week to meet with the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Following that visit, the Spanish government has maintained a very clear position in favour of strengthening NATO’s deployment in the face of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In statements to The Diplomat, a Foreign Affairs spokesperson explained that Biden had summoned to the telematic meeting the highest representatives of the EU institutions, as well as the leaders of the European G-7 countries (the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy, which currently chairs the group) and the Presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is currently held by Poland.
The spokesman emphasised that “Spain has been the country that has had the most direct contact with the Biden Administration in recent weeks”, and recalled that the minister had met with Blinken, with the President of the US House of Representatives, and with members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“We are already in agreement, they know our position first hand and we know theirs in the same way,” he said, while indicating that, in addition, in the last few hours, Pedro Sánchez spoke with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
