TENSE TALKS FAIL TO MAKE PROGRESS
US, Russia repeat existing positions in Geneva security face-off described as frank and professional
Russia and the United States gave no sign that they had narrowed their differences on Ukraine and wider European security in talks in Geneva, with Moscow repeating demands that Washington said it could not accept.
Russia has massed troops near Ukraine’s border while demanding that the US-led Nato alliance rules out admitting the former Soviet state or expanding further into what Moscow sees as its backyard.
“Unfortunately we have a great disparity in our principled approaches to this. The US and Russia in some ways have opposite views on what needs to be done,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters.
Deputy US Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said: “We were firm … in pushing back on security proposals that are simply non-starters to the United States.”
Washington and Kyiv say 100,000 Russian troops moved to within striking distance of Ukraine could be preparing a new invasion, eight years after Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from its neighbour.
Russia denies any such plans and says it is responding to what it calls aggressive behaviour from Nato and Ukraine, which has tilted toward the West and aspires to join the alliance.
Ryabkov repeated a set of demands including a ban on further Nato expansion and an end to the alliance’s activity in the central and eastern European countries that joined it after 1997.
“We underscore that for us it’s absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine never, never, ever becomes a member of Nato,” he said.
“We do not trust the other side, so to say. We need ironclad, waterproof, bulletproof, legally binding guarantees. Not assurances, not safeguards, guarantees with all the words ‘shall, must’, everything that should be put in, ‘never ever becoming a member of Nato’. It’s a matter of Russia’s national security.”
Sherman said: “We will not allow anyone to slam closed Nato’s open-door policy, which has always been central to the Nato alliance.
“We will not forego bilateral cooperation with sovereign states that wish to work with the United States, and we will not make decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine, about Europe without Europe, or about Nato without Nato.”
The build-up of troops near Ukraine has raised US-Russia tensions to their highest levels since the end of the Cold War.
Both sides said Russia had stated that it did not intend to invade, something that Ryabkov said could never happen, but Sherman said she did not know if Russia was willing to de-escalate.
He said Russia needed to see movement by Nato, and failure to provide that would be a mistake that would damage Nato’s own security. Russia would respond in a “military-technical” way if talks broke down, Ryabkov said – a possible reference to redeploying intermediate-range nuclear (INF) missiles in Europe, which he had said last month could happen if the West declined to respond.
Despite the lack of obvious progress, the atmosphere between the two sides appeared cordial. Sherman called it a frank and forthright discussion, while Ryabkov said it was difficult but professional and that the US had approached the Russian proposals seriously.
The US and Russia … have opposite views on what needs to be done SERGEI RYABKOV, RUSSIAN MINISTER