Ukraine a top priority for Quad leaders

Scott Morrison has flagged that this week’s Quad meeting in Melbourne will discuss the deteriorating situation in Ukraine.

Scott Morrison in Canberra on Monday. Picture: Gary Ramage

Scott Morrison has flagged the upcoming Quad meeting in Melbourne this week will discuss the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, as he warned Australians in the country “it is time to leave if you wish to leave”.

Federal cabinet’s national ­security committee discussed the crisis on Monday after the US warned Russia was on track to have an invasion force of 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s border by mid-February.

The Prime Minister said Australia remained “highly concerned” about the threat of invasion, and urged Moscow to remain in talks to resolve the crisis.

Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne will meet Quadrilateral Security Dialogue counterparts Antony Blinken of the US, India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and Yoshimasa Hayashi of Japan on Friday.

The Quad is predominantly focused on the threat posed by China, but last week’s summit ­between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin has fed into fears the states will increasingly work together to take on the West.

“The Quad foreign ministers will be meeting here in Australia later this week and that will be a further opportunity for us to be discussing collective security issues and our shared prosperity from our engagements together, particularly in the Indo-Pacific,” Mr Morrison said on Monday.

“But, again, we would be urging Russia to remain … engaged in reciprocal dialogue.”

He said Australia supported Ukraine’s sovereignty, and any breach of its territory “is not a mark of peace”.

Mr Morrison said the government had sought to contact all Australians in Ukraine, noting many were dual nationals.

“They’ll be looking to their own arrangements, as we understand it. But our message has been very clear … that it is time to leave if you wish to leave,” he said.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned on Sunday that a Russian ­invasion of Ukraine could be ­imminent and might entail a high cost for the civilians living there.

“We are in the window,” Mr Sullivan told Fox News. “Any day now, Russia could take military action against Ukraine or it could be a couple of weeks from now, or Russia could choose to take the diplomatic path instead.”

Russia has 83 battalion tactical groups poised near the country, a substantial increase from the 53 groups it had in December and 60 last month, according to officials familiar with US intelligence ­assessments.

They suggest 25,000 to 50,000 civilians could be killed or wounded if Russia mounted an attack to try to take over the entire country.

French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, was due in Moscow on Monday and Kiev on Tuesday to spearhead efforts to de-escalate the crisis.

He was expected to push forward a stalled peace plan for the conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was also due to discuss the crisis in a Monday meeting with President Joe Biden in Washington.

“We worked hard to send a clear message to Russia that it will have a high price if they were to intervene into Ukraine,” Mr Scholz told The Washington Post.

US President Joe Biden has offered 3000 American forces to bolster NATO’s eastern flank, with a batch of those troops arriving in Poland on Sunday.

At a meeting in Beijing on Friday, Mr Xi and Mr Putin declared a “no limits” partnership, backing each other over stand-offs on Ukraine and Taiwan, and promising to collaborate more against the West. “Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of co-operation,” they said in a joint statement.