troops on a very, very volatile flashpoint border. and somewhere in zelensky s mind has got to be the truth of the matter, if talks between the united states and russia break down on january the 10th and the united states decides to impose sanctions on russia and russia suddenly feels it has nothing to lose and decides it s going tiny to invade ukraine, the ukrainians will pretty much be on their own. because nato and the u.s. have said that they have no appetite to put troops on the ground and get involved in a war with russia. and it s going to be very hard for the ukrainians to defend themselves without the help of any other military force on the ground with them against the full might of the russian army. you mentioned european security. you re in london. what do the brits, the french, the germans make of biden s approach to putin and russia? do they think he s doing enough?
hearing, nic? reporter: the kremlin isn t laying out a reason why putin asked for the phone call. what we heard from the white house is they remain concerned about russia s continued troop buildup on the border of ukraine. and the message is that if russia really wants to have a constructive and productive dialogue in these talks that are coming up on january the 10th, then this needs to happen in an atmosphere of de-escalation, and the united states says it s not seeing any de-escalation at the moment in terms of the russian troop buildup. and in the past few days, the united states flew a spy plane over ukraine with the ability to look at what russian troops were doing, how they were deployed. russia, of course, said it had withdrawn 10,000 troops. the united states seems to have the view that at the moment russian posturing for productive talks is not there, but we
what was the mission of that besides gathering intel. reporter: the russians said they had gone back to their permanent bases. absent good and precise surveillance, it s hard to tell if the troops have done what the russian authorities say they have done. it is hard to know if they have taken back their military hardware. i think that flight gives you a better assessment of what s going on, russia is doing nothing to reduce the tensions. what we have heard from the kremlin is that president putin requested this phone conversation because what he describes or what the kremlin describes as the issues ahead of both countries for these talks in january, january the 10th, are extremely complicated. that s the kremlin s language.
batting it away and not being seen to, you know, kowtow, as it were, with russia with this request? reporter: yeah, what we are being told from the white house is this fits with biden s sort of playbook on how international diplomacy should be done. he thinks that leadership to leadership talks can be productive and useful. certainly it would appear in the context of, you know, that phone call that they had a few weeks ago, the agreement there, lower-level diplomatic tract should be established. through that track russia set forward its demands about nato not allowing ukraine to become a member of nato and for nato not to base troops and weapons systems inside ukraine. that first call allowed for a lower-level diplomatic track which has led to the establishment of the talks in geneva on january the 10th.
conversations and talks. the narrative from the russian side is they still expect to be able to get what they want. we have heard russia now that wendy sherman, deputy secretary of state, will be heading the u.s. delegation to the talks in geneva on january the 10th. and the deputy foreign minister on the russian side will be heading their delegation. they are saying that there will be support from the russian ministry of defense at those negotiations as well. but, you know, to that phone call today, it s very unclear why president putin wants to, you know, speak again just a few weeks after having already spoken to president biden and both of them agreeing there should be sort of another track of diplomacy lower than them, but president biden has said that he believes in leader to leader conversations and is quite happy to have this conversation with president putin. what putin gets out of it, the takeaways, what he tries to sell to the public here in russia, we ll see that over the n