Geneva:
A top Russian official said he had a “difficult” conversation with his US counterpart on Sunday as preliminary talks over Ukraine got underway amid fears of a Russian invasion of its pro-Western neighbor.
“The conversation was difficult, it couldn’t have been easy,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said through Interfax news agency after meeting US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman at a working dinner in Geneva.
Ryabkov described his conversations with Sherman, which lasted a little over two hours, as “businesslike.” Monday was to be a full day of talks.
“I don’t think we will lose any time tomorrow,” Ryabkov said, adding that he “never loses the optimism.”
The United States and Russia had made clear agreements ahead of security talks over Ukraine, with Washington warning against confrontation and Moscow excluding concessions.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Russia to avoid aggression and take the diplomatic path as the Kremlin, which is under strong pressure to withdraw troops from the Ukrainian border, expanded new security arrangements with the West. demands.
For its part, Sherman, in her initial talks with Ryabkov, emphasized “the United States’ commitment to the international principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the freedom of sovereign nations to choose their own alliances,” the State Department said in a statement. statement.
Before the talks, Ryabkov told Russian news agencies that Moscow was “disappointed” with signals from Washington and from Brussels, where NATO and the European Union are based.
The talks with the United States kick off a week of diplomacy in which Russian officials will meet with representatives from NATO and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) as Washington tries to assure European allies they will not be sidelined put.
“There is a path of dialogue and diplomacy to try and resolve some of these differences,” Blinken told DailyExpertNews on Sunday.
“The other path is confrontation and huge consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression against Ukraine. We are about to test the proposition as to which path President (Vladimir) Putin is willing to take.”
‘Gun to head of Ukraine’
Since late last year, Putin has gathered tens of thousands of troops on the Ukrainian border and demanded guarantees that NATO will not expand further east.
The Kremlin insists that NATO should never grant membership to ex-Soviet Ukraine, which is pushing for accession.
The United States says many of Moscow’s proposals are non-starters.
Blinken warned that a positive outcome of the talks would depend in part on Russia’s willingness to distance itself from its aggressive stance, which he compared to “an atmosphere of escalation with a gun to Ukraine’s head”.
“If we really want to make progress, we need to see de-escalation,” said US President Joe Biden’s top diplomat.
Russia could otherwise have serious economic and financial consequences, “as well as that NATO should almost certainly strengthen its position near Russia and continue to help Ukraine,” he told ABC television on Sunday.
Putin met Biden in Geneva in June and agreed on regular “stability talks” between Sherman and Ryabkov. Previous rounds were held in the Swiss city in July and September.
‘Massive’ Retaliation
In two calls to Putin, Biden warned of dire consequences if Russia invades Ukraine.
Measures under consideration include sanctions against Putin’s inner circle, canceling Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany or, in the most drastic scenario, severing Russia’s ties to the global banking system.
Russia insists it was misled after the Cold War and understood that NATO would not expand eastward.
Instead, the US-led alliance welcomed most of the former Warsaw Pact countries and the three Baltic countries under Soviet rule.
On Sunday, in an interview for Russia’s TASS news agency in Geneva, Ryabkov accused NATO of trying to “push back” Russia for decades.
“So NATO needs to pack up and return to the 1997 borders,” Ryabkov said.
Russia has been putting pressure on Ukraine since 2014 after a revolution overthrew a government that sided with the Kremlin to move closer to Europe.
Russia has taken over the Crimean peninsula and is supporting an uprising in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 13,000 people.
“It is very likely that we will encounter the reluctance of our US and NATO colleagues to really realize what we need,” Ryabkov said on Sunday.
“Despite the threats that are constantly being made against us…we will not make any concessions,” he said, adding that this would amount to “acting against the interests of our security”.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)