Putin threatened invasion in phone call with Poroshenko — media sources

President Poroshenko held a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin late Wednesday, November 26. At 22:00 journalists waiting for completion of the meeting of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction witnessed as Russian Ambassador Mikhail Zurabov exited the administration offices. The ambassador refused to comment on the late visit. Later, representatives of the Presidential Administration told the INSIDER  publication that a difficult conversation with Putin was taking place in the presence of the Russian ambassador. According to sources, Poroshenko later arrived at the faction meeting in a bad mood and commented on his conversation with Putin, which had lasted 90 minutes. "There is a problem with Russia. They are threatening to begin an attack and are demanding the recognition of the separatist republics and the refusal to join NATO and the EU," another source quoted Poroshenko to INSIDER. Another person close to the president said there had been no contacts with Moscow for more than a week after the summit in Australia. "Previously they talked on the phone almost every day and we also communicated through intermediaries. Now all contacts have stopped and we do not understand what he (Putin) is planning," he said. Last Thursday, November 20, there were violent disagreements in a working group preparing the coalition agreements. The Poroshenko Bloc did not want to sign the coalition agreement as amended, which referred to Ukraine's accession to NATO.  But representatives of the other factions prevailed. On Friday, November 21, during the meeting with civic activists on Maidan, Poroshenko was angry and made it clear that he was very unhappy with that decision. "You think that what you did was better, but really it only makes matters worse. Soon the Alliance will issue a statement that it cannot accept us. I will be discussing this with Biden right now, asking them not to do that," the president told the activists. "Because there is a military conflict in the East, nobody will accept us in the Alliance. However, it will only irritate Putin," he said, according to his associates. On November 26, the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, said that Ukraine should become a federation in order to resolve the crisis in the Donbas. Earlier, the same position on autonomy was voiced by Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, who then retracted her words. As has been reported, in March, before the invasion of Crimea, Putin had demanded the federalization of Ukraine and the rejection of NATO and EU. Thursday morning, November 27, Poroshenko's office denied that Putin had threatened to attack Ukraine. Iryna Fryz, the head of information management for the Presidential Administration, stated that during the telephone conversation between Poroshenko and Putin, Russia's president had not threatened Ukraine with a military attack. "Officially. Yesterday the Russian Ambassador Zubarov was not present during the telephone conversation of the President of Ukraine with V. Putin. Therefore, the information that appeared in the media is as unreliable as the information that any threats had been made against a sovereign state," Frytz wrote in her Facebook. Later, Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian president, confirmed that a telephone conversation between Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin had taken place. "Indeed, at the initiative of the Ukrainian party a telephone conversation between presidents Putin and Poroshenko took place the night before," he said.