Several flights to Ukraine halted, redirected as crisis brews

MOSCOW (AP) —
Some airlines have cancelled or diverted flights to Ukraine amid heightened fears that an invasion by Russia is imminent despite intensive weekend talks between the Kremlin and the West.

Dutch airline KLM has cancelled flights to Ukraine until further notice, the company said Saturday.

Dutch sensitivity to potential danger in Ukrainian airspace is high in the wake of the 2014 shooting down of a Malaysian airliner over an area of eastern Ukraine held by Russia-backed rebels. All 298 people aboard died, including 198 Dutch citizens.

The Ukrainian charter airline SkyUp said Sunday that its flight from Madeira, Portugal, to Kyiv was diverted to the Moldovan capital Chisinau after the plane's Irish lessor said it was banning flights in Ukrainian airspace.

Ukrainian presidential spokesman Serhii Nykyforov told The Associated Press that Ukraine has not closed its airspace. A statement from the Infrastructure Ministry said: “Some carriers are experiencing difficulties associated with fluctuations in the insurance markets.”

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine's Kremlin-friendly leader was driven from office by a popular uprising. Moscow responded by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and then backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed over 14,000 people.

A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany helped halt large-scale battles, but regular skirmishes have continued, and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled.

Russia denies it intends to invade but has massed well over 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border and has sent troops to exercises in neighbouring Belarus.

In an hour long Saturday call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Joe Biden said that invading Ukraine would cause “widespread human suffering” and that the West was committed to diplomacy to end the crisis but “equally prepared for other scenarios,” the White House said.

It offered no suggestion that the call diminished the threat of an imminent war in Europe.

The two presidents spoke a day after Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned that U.S. intelligence shows a Russian invasion could begin within days.

U.S. officials say Russia's build up of firepower has reached the point where it could invade on short notice.

The Putin-Biden call, after a call between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron earlier in the day, came at a critical moment for what has become the biggest security crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. U.S. officials believe they have mere days to prevent an invasion and enormous bloodshed in Ukraine.

In a sign that American officials are getting ready for a worst-case scenario, the United States announced plans to evacuate most of its staff from the embassy in the Ukrainian capital and urged all American citizens in Ukraine to leave the country immediately. Britain joined other European nations in telling its citizens to leave Ukraine.

Canada has shuttered its embassy in Kyiv and relocated its diplomatic staff to a temporary office in Lviv, located in the western part of the country, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said Saturday. Lviv is home to a Ukrainian military base that has served as the main hub for Canada's 200-soldier training mission in the former Soviet country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has downplayed concerns about an invasion, urging the country to remain calm.

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