Amid the crisis in eastern Ukraine, the government of Vladimir Putin said on Friday (10) that Russia will present a proposal for a formal pact with NATO to stop the expansion of the western military alliance.
The price of a lack of agreement between the parties could be a “great showdown” between Moscow and the West, warned Deputy Chancellor Sergei Riabkov, during a news conference in the Russian capital, dramatically.
“Putin is Joe Biden [em encontro virtual na terça, 7] who will prepare a document in a week and deliver it. We believe that we have to deliver our conceptual plan to begin with,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.
While Peskov acted as the good policeman, despite Biden rejecting any Russian conditions to defuse the crisis provoked by the movement of Kremlin troops near Ukraine, Riabkov acted as the bad policeman, closer to reality.
“If our opponents refuse, and try to torpedo the proposal, it will worsen their own security situation. It will move us into a big confrontation,” he said.
Of course, menacing rhetoric is mostly just that, a speech. No one believes that Putin or Biden want to see a war with the potential to bring the owners of 92 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenals face to face.
That said, the signs that the Russian wants a definitive solution to the Ukrainian question seem increasingly clear.
The current stage of the crisis came when, in early November, Putin began moving troops into regions some 300 km from the Ukrainian border. Then, Washington and Kiev said that the approximately 100,000 men would be preparing an invasion for the beginning of 2022.
The Kremlin denied it, but the memory of the annexation of Crimea and the start of the civil war in eastern Ukraine in 2014 is fresh in the memory.
In addition to the historic ties between Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, Moscow sees neighbors as a vital area of ​​influence to avoid proximity to enemy troops — in this case, NATO.
Putin, or any other Russian leader, does not give up buffer zones, whether allied with governments like the Minsk dictatorship or a party country like Ukraine. Strictly speaking, he doesn’t even need to invade it: just maintain the status quo of frozen civil war.
As the West reached out to the Ukrainians relatively, allowing dating for an entry into NATO that is virtually impossible because they have territorial conflicts and supplying weapons, Putin decided to raise the bar.
With the veiled threat of invasion and the virtual summit with Biden this week, the Russian appears to have put on the table a willingness to close the matter on his terms. Basically, implement something similar to the Minsk accords, which established the autonomy of Russian ethnic areas in the Donbass and at the same time subordinated them to Kiev.
But the Ukrainian government ended up rejecting this, noting the perpetuation of the country’s fracture. Europeans were quiet in practical terms.
Now, Putin aims to toss the hot potato into the American’s lap and, at the same time, construct a narrative that diplomatic paths have all been tried. It can work, but it can also lead to such a big showdown.
Putin also wants something on paper because he knows what the West’s promise of post-Cold War cooperation has turned into: NATO’s expansion to the east.
Another point that Peskov and Riabkov mentioned was the need for an agreement aimed at limiting the installation of short-range and intermediate missiles in Europe. “We need legal guarantees because our Western counterparts have failed to implement the obligations they have done verbally,” the spokesman said.
He was referring to the moratorium on the installation of new weapons of this type, which were released when the US left in 2019 the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty), one of the main ones that ended the Cold War. Only the Russians claim to fulfill it.
The Russian argument is that the deployment of nuclear-capable missiles in Eastern European countries threatens a surprise attack on Moscow and other cities. NATO says that doesn’t make sense, as European capitals are also at the mercy of Russian-style missiles — the free ones are the US.
Riabkov, who is the chief Russian arms control negotiator, went further and said there was a risk of a “missile crisis in Europe” in the style of 1962 Cuba and 1983 Western Europe.
While this is happening, the daily risks multiply, particularly in the Black Sea, Russia’s exit to the Mediterranean and which bathes the entire area of ​​litigation.
On Thursday (9), a Ukrainian ship sailed in the Sea of ​​Azov to the Kerch Strait, closed by the Russians in Crimea for navigation without permission. He turned around, but the Foreign Ministry in Moscow called the action a provocation, which mobilized the Coast Guard.
This Friday, an American spy plane was intercepted by Russian fighter jets near the Crimea, over the Black Sea. This type of action is almost daily on both sides, but the region is experiencing this moment of particular tension, in which a shot fired by mistake can escalate unpredictably.
.
