As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Western leaders to avoid stirring “panic” over the massive Russian troop buildup on his country’s borders, Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed on the need for de-escalation.

Neither Putin nor his European and American counterparts had until now appeared ready to give ground in the weeks-long crisis, the worst in decades between Russia and the West.

But according to a Macron aide, Putin told the French leader in a call lasting more than an hour that he had “no offensive plans.”

In Washington, Biden nevertheless said Friday he would soon send a small number of US troops to bolster the NATO presence in eastern Europe as tensions remain heightened.

The United States already has tens of thousands of troops stationed across mostly Western Europe.

At the Pentagon, top officials urged a focus on diplomacy while saying that Russia now had enough troops and equipment in place to threaten the whole of Ukraine.

Any such conflict warned the top US general, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley would be “horrific” for both sides.

Milley said “If that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant, and it would result in a significant amount of casualties,”

But speaking alongside Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said there “is still time and space for diplomacy.

Austin said “Mr Putin can do the right thing as well,” “There is no reason that this situation has to devolve into conflict.”

During his talks with Macron, Putin “expressed no offensive plans and said he wanted to continue the talks with France and our allies,” the aide to the French president said.

Their conversation “enabled us to agree on the need for a de-escalation,” the aide told journalists. Putin “said very clearly that he did not want confrontation.”

Naftali took office in June, following Benjamin Netanyahu who was in power for 12 years and had close ties with Putin.

Russian state television aired footage of the pair meeting ahead of the talks in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

Putin said the two countries have “unique” ties and hoped for “continuity” of the “trusting relationship” he developed with Israel’s previous government.

Bennett told Putin that Israel views him as “a true friend of the Jewish people” and praised the Soviet war effort in fighting Nazi Germany.

He said the pair will discuss the “situation in Syria and our efforts to prevent a breakthrough in Iran’s military nuclear program”.

As he left for Sochi, Bennett said Israel’s relations with Moscow are an “important element” of the country’s foreign policy.

This was in part due, he said, “to the million Russian speakers in Israel, who constitute a bridge between the two countries”.

The visit may be one of Putin’s last face-to-face meetings with a foreign leader before Russia’s new Covid restrictions come into force next week.

The Kremlin has said the 69-year-old will scrap in-person meetings during a nationwide week-long holiday starting October 30 designed to curb record virus deaths.

Last week, Bennett’s office said the pair will discuss Iran’s nuclear programme.

Moscow is one of the signatories to a 2015 deal that saw sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for limits to its nuclear capability.

Former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions, leading Tehran to gradually roll back its commitments under the agreement.

Bennett told the United Nations General Assembly last month that Israel “will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.”

Putin had congratulated Bennett after he was sworn in and said that Russian-Israeli cooperation would help strengthen “peace, security and stability in the Middle East.”

Navalny – a staunch critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin almost died from a nerve agent attack last year.

He and his team accused Putin of ordering the attack, allegations the Kremlin denies, even though NATO, the EU and the US have categorically stated that Russia was behind the nerve attack

Navalny was rearrested when he attempted going back to the country this year, and he has been in prison since.

The UK Foreign Office on Friday, August 20, said the sanctions, taken with the US, targeted those “directly responsible for planning or carrying out the attack”.

All seven of the individuals targeted are members of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), it added.

UK Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab said: “We are sending a clear message that any use of chemical weapons by the Russian state violates international law, and a transparent criminal investigation must be held.

“We urge Russia to declare its full stock of Novichok nerve agents.

The term Novichok is a group of nerve agents developed in a lab by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They paralyse muscles and can lead to death by asphyxiation.

Navalny, 45, was exposed to one such nerve agent on a flight from Tomsk, Siberia, to Moscow on 20 August 2020. By the time the plane landed, he could not speak and was taken directly to hospital.

He was later transferred to a hospital in Berlin, Germany, where he spent a further 32 days recovering, including 24 days in intensive care.

Japan warned of the growing threat posed by Chinese and Russian collaboration and said it was necessary to “wake up” to Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan and protect the island “as a democratic country.”

State Minister of Defense Yasuhide Nakayama said the fate of Taiwan and Okinawa are key to stemming the military influence of China and Russia in the Western Pacific.

“We are family with Taiwan,” said Yasuhide Nakayama, Japan’s state minister of defence to the Hudson Institute online forum.

Its security “is clearly related to Okinawa’s protection,” part of Japan.

Okinawa is home to concentrations of Japan Air and Maritime Self-Defense Forces and American Air Force, Marine Corps and naval support facilities, as well as service members’ families.

Okinawa and Taiwan are “kind of like nose and eyes, really close,” he said.

Nakayama revealed that China recently sent 28 fighters across the Taiwanese straits, with some flying into Taiwanese air space to intimidate Taipei. He added Chinese president Xi Jinping is also trying to leave the Taiwanese with an impression that they are surrounded, by sending ships, including an aircraft carrier, fighter aircraft and bombers on patrols and exercises east of Taiwan.

Some of these exercises are conducted with the Russians, “giving lots of threats to Taiwan.”

“We have to show deterrence to China and Russia,” not just defence, as they act more aggressively in the Indo-Pacific, he said. They have ramped up joint military exercises in the region to make their forces more interoperable.

As steps to improve deterrence, Nakayama said Tokyo “is thinking about stand-off capabilities” for the future and launching new satellite constellations to detect hypersonic cruise missiles that Beijing and Moscow have newly developed.

He also revealed that Tokyo is continuing to buy aircraft like the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters and other technologies from Washington, D.C and says both countries should have continual exercises so individual service members have a better understanding of how their allies think and operate.

He then called on the United States to look at Japan’s technical capabilities for security, like “space debris clean-up” to protect satellite constellations.

Nakayama said future generations in Japan and the United States may question their nations’ decision to accept a “One China” policy in the early 1970s that linked mainland China and Taiwan together as one country.

“Democratic countries have to protect democratic countries and allies” against “the autocrats,” China and Russia, he said.

Nakayama said the security domains ranged from air, sea, land, cyber and space to include electronic warfare.

Several times during the discussion Nakayama mentioned how close the United States and Japan have become since the attack on Pearl Harbor and the ending of World War II in the Pacific, with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Now it’s the most strong alliance; any other cannot compare,” he said.

But what is “happening around Japan” should “be a very big matter for the U.S., Europe and allies. Looking at China alone, Nakayama noted its increased investments in ballistic missile submarines and the concurrent development of the JL-3 sea-launched ballistic missile that is capable of striking the continental United States. “This is a big, big threat not just for us,” but the United States and Europe, he said referring both to the longer-range sub-launched missiles and China’s building of artificial islands.

As this is occurring, “the Russian are exercising [naval forces] right off [the] western front of Honolulu” and exercising with China in land and air manoeuvre near their shared borders, Nakayama added.