Russia-US talks reach impasse
THE US and Russia remained deadlocked after crisis talks this week over Moscow’s desire to block any future Nato expansion to the east, but officials agreed to continue discussions on other high-stakes security issues that the Biden administration hopes can avert another invasion of Ukraine.
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said US negotiators put forward suggestions related to the scope of American military exercises and the placement of US missiles in Europe, cautioning that the bilateral discussion in Geneva, the first of a series of talks this week on Russia’s military build-up around Ukraine, was only the start of a potentially lengthy process.
“We were firm, however, in pushing back on security proposals that are simply non-starters for the US,” she said after the seven-hour meeting. “We will not allow anyone to slam closed Nato’s open-door policy, which has always been central to the Nato alliance.”
The talks, along with parallel discussions with European officials scheduled for today and tomorrow,represent a crucial test of the Biden administration’s attempt to prove that collaboration among global democracies can prevail over authoritarianism and the defiance of international norms.
Washington and Kiev have accused Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, of concentrating more than 100 000 troops around Ukraine in an apparent threat of a multipronged attack. Russia says the movements are innocuous military manoeuvres, but US intelligence has found that Moscow is planning an offensive that could include as many as 175 000 forces.
Whether the talks can head off further conflict in Ukraine will probably come down to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to accept alternate security concessions from the West in lieu of the guarantees he has sought on halting Nato’s eastward growth. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, speaking separately to reporters after Monday’s talks, denied plans to attack Ukraine and said there had been no progress on the Kremlin’s central demand: that Ukraine and other Eastern European nations be barred from Nato.
But he signalled optimism about future discussions, a possible reflection of Russian satisfaction that its longtime desire to limit Nato’s posture has assumed a substantial, if disputed, role in global talks.
“We are fed up with loose talk, half-promises, misinterpretations of what happened at different forms of negotiations behind closed doors,” Ryabkov said of Nato’s activities in Eastern Europe and the alliance’s potential inclusion of Ukraine or Georgia. “We need ironclad, waterproof, bulletproof, legally binding guarantees.
Not assurances, not safeguards, but guarantees.
“But I don’t consider the situation hopeless,” he continued. “I think the usefulness of the talks in Geneva is mainly that for the first time we were able to talk about issues that before existed, but as if behind the scenes.”
US diplomats will discuss Ukraine with their Russian counterparts again at a special meeting of the Nato-Russia Council in Brussels today and a session of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Vienna tomorrow.
Michael Kofman, a Russia expert at research organisation CNA, said the stand-off over Nato enlargement and co-operation with non-member states like Ukraine remained a “dealbreaker”.
“Ryabkov’s task was to determine whether political will exists to discuss Russia’s more fundamental demands,” he said. “There is not. What Putin does with that information is anyone’s guess, but the Russian military continues to mass forces.”
The Kremlin has portrayed the tensions with Ukraine and its Western allies as a security threat to Moscow, demanding written guarantees that the military alliance will not expand eastward or work closely with countries that once formed part of the Soviet Union.
Moscow, which has denied involvement in the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine despite backing separatists there with forces and material, is also calling for the removal of all Nato military infrastructure installed after 1997 in Eastern European countries that are now members of the alliance.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken meanwhile ahead of the talks reiterated US warnings that Moscow would face “massive consequences” if it invades. He described the discussions as an opportunity to assess Putin’s willingness to resolve the crisis diplomatically.
US officials have said military action against Ukraine would trigger unprecedented sanctions against Russia, including potentially cutting the country off from the global financial system. But experts have questioned the extent to which financial measures will influence Russia, which is already under sanctions for the annexation of Crimea, malign cyberactivity and the treatment of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned last year and later imprisoned.
Sherman voiced scepticism about Russia’s claim that its massing of forces along the country’s border with Ukraine did not constitute preparations for an invasion.
“They can prove that, in fact, they have no intention by de-escalating and returning troops to barracks,” she said.
Sherman said that she and her team told the Russian delegation that the Biden administration was open to discussing topics including intermediate-range missiles, the placement of offensive missiles in Ukraine, and military exercises – issues that could function as a basis for future agreements if Russia is willing to make its own concessions in exchange.
Russia, accusing the West of “coming with its missiles to our doorstep”, proposed limits on intermediate and short-range missiles in two draft treaties it released last month.
But US officials have cautioned that some of Russia’s demands are so unrealistic that they worry Moscow is stipulating conditions it knows Washington will reject, with the aim of gaining domestic support in Russia and creating a pretext for possible military action against Ukraine. Other analysts contend that Putin has created the threat of a new Ukraine war to secure concessions from the US and its allies.