Publish: 27 Jan 2022, 11:47 am
A shipment of military aid from the United States is transported at Boryspil International Airport in Boryspil, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan 25, 2022. The New York Times
The United States and its allies on Wednesday formally
rejected Russia’s demands that NATO retreat from Eastern Europe and bar Ukraine
from ever entering the alliance, but they proposed several areas — including
nuclear arms control and limits on military exercises — where they were willing
to negotiate.
The written responses, issued separately by the Biden
administration and NATO, offered President Vladimir Putin a choice: Enter
negotiations with Washington and its allies, including Ukraine, or proceed with
an invasion and face what the administration says will be crushing economic
sanctions.
US intelligence officials say Putin still has not made a
decision — and may not for several weeks.
As described by US and European officials, the two written
responses formalise positions that the United States and NATO have asserted
since Putin issued his demands weeks ago while massing Russian troops along
Ukraine’s eastern border and more recently to the north, in Belarus.
Putin has sought “guarantees” that Ukraine will never join
NATO, and he wants NATO allies to pull all troops and nuclear weapons from
former Soviet republics and nations that once belonged to the Warsaw Pact. He
said in December that his demands must be addressed “right away, right now.”
The documents delivered on Wednesday rejected a few of the
demands as “nonstarters” and listed several Western concerns about Russia’s
behaviour that would have to be part of “reciprocal agreements.” And those, by
necessity, would take time.
In a brief speech and then in response to reporters’
questions, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the responses from the United
States and NATO were drafted together and approved by President Joe Biden after
weeks of consultations with allies and Ukraine. The US response, Blinken said,
“sets out a serious diplomatic path forward should Russia choose it.”
He said he expected to speak with his Russian counterpart,
Sergey Lavrov, in the coming days when Russian officials are “ready to discuss
next steps.” Senior American diplomats say at least one more round of talks
will probably take place with the Russians before Putin decides between
diplomacy and an invasion, which US officials say could kill thousands of
people.
Blinken said the United States would not publicly release
its written response “because we think that diplomacy has the best chance to
succeed if we provide space for confidential talks,” adding that the US “hopes
and expects” the Russians will agree.
Whether they will abide is unclear: Lavrov said after a
meeting with Blinken in Geneva last week that he believed the US document
should be made public, according to Russia’s Tass news agency. And on
Wednesday, he said that his government would describe the US and NATO responses
to the Russian people, even if the details remained confidential.
According to officials familiar with the documents, the
responses begin with broad principles, including that NATO will not rescind its
“open door” policy that any state that wants to join the alliance can seek to
do so. Biden, however, noted at a news conference last week that Ukraine, which
has struggled with democratic governance and corruption, would not qualify for
many years.
The documents also make clear that Russia will not have veto
power over the presence of nuclear weapons, troops or conventional arms in NATO
countries. But they open the door to talks on reciprocal restraints on short-
and medium-range nuclear weapons, including a revival of the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty. And they say the United States and its allies are
willing to talk about mutual rules to limit the size and locations of military
exercises; such limits would assure that they are far from borders and could
not be mistaken for a force gathering for an invasion.
White House officials estimated that high-level US officials
had conducted more than 180 meetings with their European counterparts — a
statistic meant to signal that they had made sure that the response was
developed in full partnership with America’s allies. Ukraine’s foreign minister
said on Wednesday that his country had reviewed and approved the responses
dealing with its future.
Russia had insisted for weeks that the United States provide
written responses to its demands, which were issued in late December, before it
would decide on its next course of action. Russia asserts that it does not
intend to invade Ukraine, but US officials say the Kremlin has drawn up plans
for a ground assault that could come at any time. They caution that Putin could
also attack Ukraine — where he has backed a separatist war since 2014 — in a
more limited fashion.
The Kremlin was silent on Wednesday evening, but Russian
lawmakers had a largely dismissive initial response. Konstantin I Kosachev,
deputy chairman of Russia’s upper house of Parliament, said there were “things
to discuss with the United States” even though he had not seen the written
response.
But others argued that it was time for the Kremlin to take
the unspecified “military-technical” measures that Putin had warned of if the
West did not accede to Russia’s demands.
“We took the path of negotiation, we didn’t go into hiding,
we didn’t hide anything,” said Vladimir Dzhabarov, another lawmaker in the
upper house, according to the Interfax news agency. “Now our hands are untied,
and we can act as we please.”
Speaking at the State Department, Blinken said the document
suggested “reciprocal transparency measures regarding force posture in Ukraine,
as well as measures to increase confidence regarding military exercises and
manoeuvres in Europe.”
The United States has a small number of military trainers in
Ukraine and supplies Kyiv with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual
military aid, but it keeps no combat troops in the country.
Blinken acknowledged that the US document did not represent
a new negotiating position. “It reiterates publicly what we’ve said for many
weeks,” he said.
Russia has also demanded that the United States remove
nuclear weapons from Europe and withdraw troops and weapons from former Soviet
bloc countries that joined the alliance after 1997. The United States has deemed
those demands “nonstarters.”
As diplomacy inches ahead, the United States is continuing
to take steps anticipating a worst-case scenario in Ukraine, including violence
in the capital of Kyiv.
Eight additional Marine security guards were sent to the US
Embassy two weeks ago, bringing the total number there to about 40, according
to a senior Marine official. On Sunday, the State Department ordered family
members of diplomats at the embassy to leave the country.
To Putin, Russia’s demands distill years of his grievances
about what he sees as Western overreach in Eastern Europe — a region that
Moscow considers part of its rightful sphere of influence. He also argues that
a greater Western military presence in Eastern Europe represents an existential
threat to Russia.
Speaking in Brussels, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary
general, said NATO had sent its response to the Russian Embassy in Brussels,
which also addressed Moscow’s demand for a separate Russia-NATO treaty.
Asked late Wednesday how long it would take Russia to study
the Western response, Alexander Grushko, the deputy foreign minister, replied:
“We’ll read it. We’ll study it.”
“It took our partners almost a month and a half to study our
proposal,” he said, according to Interfax._NYTimes
Subscribe Shampratik Deshkal Youtube Channel
© 2024 Shampratik Deshkal All Rights Reserved. Design & Developed By Root Soft Bangladesh