Spanish foreign minister travels to Ukraine to foster dialogue

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares is traveling Tuesday to Ukraine to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart to try to help defuse tensions with Russia.

“No one is preparing for war … the main motivation for my trip to Kyiv is to help ensure that dialogue and diplomacy are used to solve whatever controversy may currently exist with Russia,” he told reporters before his departure.

Albares said his meeting scheduled Wednesday with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dimitri Kuleva, kicks off his tour of “high-intensity diplomacy.”

He already traveled last month to Washington to discuss growing tensions with Russia and is set to meet NATO’s chief and the EU’s top diplomat in Brussels in the coming days.

“All this effort is focused on a single goal: the peaceful resolution of this conflict through dialogue.”

In light of the Russian presence on the Ukrainian border, Spain has accelerated its deployment of warships to NATO missions in the Black Sea.

But Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles has said the country is not considering sending troops to Ukraine.

“We shouldn’t make people in Spain worried about scenarios that aren’t even on the table. All the channels of dialogue remain open,” she said. “I’m not considering war, not even as a hypothesis.”