Moscow provides no details on conversation, which came after two men spoke on Friday for the first time since May
\nMoscow
\nRussian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday for the second time in three days and held a flurry of calls with three other counterparts from NATO countries.
\nMoscow provided no details on theRussia\u2019s Shoigu holds second call with US defence secretary in three days
\n conversation with Austin, which came after the two men spoke on Friday for the first time since May. Its readouts on the other calls said Shoigu had said the situation in Ukraine was worsening.
\n\u201cThey discussed the situation in Ukraine which is rapidly deteriorating,\u201d the Russian defence ministry said of Shoigu\u2019s call with French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu. \u201cIt is trending towards further uncontrolled escalation.\u201d
\nShoigu spoke separately to Turkey\u2019s defence minister Hulusi Akar and Britain\u2019s Ben Wallace.
\nThere was no indication from the Russian side that the conversations had produced any positive result. They showed, however, that Russia and members of the US-led NATO alliance are actively maintaining channels of communication at a time of rising international concern about a possible nuclear escalation.
\nWith Russia reeling from successive defeats in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has said it would resort to nuclear weapons if necessary to defend its \u201cterritorial integrity\u201d. US President Joe Biden has said the world is closer to \u201cArmageddon\u201d than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
\nNATO last week launched its annual nuclear deterrence exercise and has said it expects Russia to hold drills shortly to test the readiness of its own nuclear forces.
\nA top Russian diplomat was quoted after the Shoigu-Austin call last Friday as saying that \u201cmisunderstandings must be cleared up so that there are no accidents\u201d.
\nFrench minister Lecornu said after Sunday\u2019s call that he had reaffirmed France\u2019s desire for a peaceful resolution to the war in Ukraine, and that Paris refused to get drawn into any form of escalation.
\nBritain said Wallace had \u201crefuted\u201d claims by Shoigu that Western countries were facilitating a plan by Kyiv to escalate the conflict.
\nShoigu\u2019s ministry said he had told his French, Turkish and British counterparts of Moscow\u2019s concern that Ukraine could detonate a \u201cdirty bomb\u201d – a device laced with radioactive material. Russia has provided no evidence to substantiate such a claim.
\nPrevious Russian assertions that Ukraine might resort to using banned weapons such as biological arms have stirred concerns in the West that Moscow might be preparing to stage \u201cfalse flag\u201d attacks and blame them on Kyiv.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Moscow provides no details on conversation, which came after two men spoke on Friday for the first time since May Moscow Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday for the second time in three days and held a flurry of calls with three other counterparts from NATO countries. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-291365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n