GENVE — Russian and US officials met Sunday night for a preparatory dinner to begin high-stakes negotiations over threats to Ukraine and a widening rift between Moscow and the West, but deep pessimism reigned on both sides for a diplomatic solution. was within reach.
Even before sitting down, the senior Russian official sent to the talks warned that the United States had “lack of understanding” of the Kremlin’s security requirements, and the United States expressed doubts as to whether Russia was “serious” about the move. de-escalate the Ukraine crisis.
The comments by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov maintained the harsh rhetoric that some analysts and Western officials see as a possible prelude to new Russian military action against Ukraine. He appeared to be trying to lower expectations for a road to an agreement just hours before opening the session with a private dinner in a residential building on the shore of Lake Geneva with Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state. The two will meet again on Monday in Geneva, where they will lead the Russian and US delegations in more formal negotiations.
In comments from Russian news agencies, Mr Ryabkov said he planned to negotiate “dynamically, without pauses” to prevent the West from “putting the brakes on all this and burying it in endless discussions”.
Mr Ryabkov’s comments came hours before Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken, who appeared on several Sunday morning television programs, said he thought there was room for negotiations in the coming days in Geneva and two other European cities.
While he ruled out encroaching on Ukraine’s territorial integrity and reducing U.S. forces, he opened the door to a possible revival of a treaty abandoned by the Trump administration and to mutual restrictions on where troops could be deployed and exercises. held.
The negotiations, Mr Blinken stressed, are “not about making concessions” under the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine eight years after it annexed Crimea.
“It’s about seeing if in the context of dialogue and diplomacy there are things that both sides, all sides, can do to ease tensions,” he told DailyExpertNews. “We’ve done that in the past.”
Mr Blinken raised several times on Sunday the possibility of reviving the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned the deployment, in Europe or in Russia, of medium-range nuclear missiles. Both the Obama administration and Trump accused Moscow of violating the accord, and the United States withdrew from the treaty in 2019.
“There may be a reason to renew that,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
And Mr Blinken put forward the idea of revising an agreement on the deployment of conventional forces in Europe that could keep military exercises far from borders – thus easing fears that an exercise could be the launching point for an invasion. turn into. “Those are certainly things that could be reconsidered if — if Russia is serious about doing it,” he said.
Understand Russia’s relationship with the West
Tensions between regions are mounting and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly willing to take geopolitical risks and assert his demands.
Russians were outraged this fall when the United States and allied NATO forces held exercises in the Black Sea, near the Ukrainian and Russian coasts.
Privately, US officials have little hope that Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin would be satisfied with deals that restore the status quo a few years ago. And their concern is that the Russians will come out of the Geneva talks, and others this week in Brussels and Vienna, and declare that diplomacy has failed – and that Mr Putin will try to seize more of eastern Ukraine, or carry out cyber or other attacks to cripple the government in Kiev.
Mr Blinken seemed eager to show his openness to a range of diplomatic solutions, while stressing that if Russia rejected that path, “huge consequences” would follow. They would go well beyond the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and subsequent US sanctions for Russian election meddling in 2016 and Solar Winds’ cyberattacks on US companies and the federal government in 2020.
Understand the escalating tensions over Ukraine
US officials have detailed those consequences in recent days, describing the kinds of financial, technological and military sanctions that would take effect if Russia launches an invasion of parts or the entire country.
The foreign ministry said it would address “certain bilateral issues” with Russia on Monday, “but will not discuss European security without our European partners and allies.”
Russia is seeking what it calls “security guarantees” from the United States and the NATO alliance that would essentially give the country the kind of sphere of influence it hasn’t enjoyed in over 30 years, including Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries. in Eastern Europe. Europe. The Kremlin is supporting those demands by rallying tens of thousands of troops and equipment near its border with Ukraine, signaling its readiness to use force if diplomacy fails.
While mr. Blinken tried to focus the discussion on missile bases and military exercises in the region, Mr. Ryabkov that Russia’s goals in the talks would go far beyond arms control issues. According to the RIA Novosti news agency, signals sent by US officials ahead of the talks “show a lack of understanding of what we need.”
Mr Ryabkov said Russia would seek to review the relationship with the West established by the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997. That agreement was followed by countries in the former Soviet sphere of influence joining the Western alliance, and many in Moscow sees it as ignoring Russia’s security interests in Europe.
“We must ensure that NATO’s destructive activities that have been going on for decades are stopped and NATO returns to positions that are essentially equivalent to what was the case in 1997,” said Mr Ryabkov, according to Interfax news agency. “But it is precisely on these issues that we hear the least of all willingness on the part of the US side and NATO to reach an agreement.”