In yet another day of intense diplomatic activity over the crisis between Russia and the West, President Vladimir Putin called for an urgent meeting with the United States and its NATO partners to discuss the situation on the Ukrainian border.
At the same time, Putin arranged a video conference with his main ally on the international stage, Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Both will talk this Wednesday (15) about the European tension, adding a new dimension to the ongoing conflict.
Putin told Finnish President Sauli Niinsto over the phone that Moscow wants “to start immediate negotiations with the US and NATO to develop international legal guarantees for the security of our country.”
He later repeated the speech to his French colleague, Emmanuel Macron. Essentially, Putin said the same thing he had reported to American Joe Biden last week and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday (13).
The Russian says he deployed about 100,000 troops to reinforce his western borders to defend against an increase in military activity in Ukraine, sensing the idea of ​​a military retake by Kiev from territories controlled in the east of the country by pro-Russian rebels since 2014.
That year, Putin responded to the overthrow of the neighboring Allied government by annexing Crimea and fomenting civil war in the east, which has killed 14,000 people and is undefined.
Now the West accuses the Russian of planning the same thing: to invade Ukraine, which of course Putin denies. All leaders, starting with Biden, promised unprecedented sanctions against Moscow in the event of an attack.
With the current movement, the Russian wants to take advantage of the lack of European resolution to force a solution to his satisfaction. That is, keeping Ukraine and ex-Soviet countries like Georgia out of the Western military umbrella, keeping opposing forces away from its borders.
In Belarus, he already has that guaranteed by his support for the dictatorship of Aleksandr Lukachenko, who on Wednesday jailed an opposition leader for 18 years as part of the crackdown he has exercised since he rigged yet another presidential election in 2020.
Ukraine continues to campaign to denounce the risk of being attacked, and asks for more Western support. Putin complains about the provision of Western military equipment, such as drones and anti-tank missiles, to Kiev. The US military budget for 2022, under review in the Senate, provides for US$300 million in aid for the Ukrainians.
Last week, Russia also warned of a new missile crisis, referring to the impasse over Cuba in 1962 and the failed negotiations on this type of weapon in Europe in 1983, episodes that almost led to nuclear war.
As the US left the INF, a treaty that barred the deployment of intermediate-range missiles with nuclear capabilities in Europe, Moscow says it maintains a unilateral moratorium on it and fears the Americans will move the weapons to Ukraine.
That would leave the Russian capital just minutes away from an atomic explosion, the Kremlin claims. It is a fact that all major cities in Eastern Europe are also susceptible to this, as Moscow has missiles of the same, model Iskander-M, installed in the European enclave of Kaliningrad.
Technicalities aside, NATO took the Russian bait. Its general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, went public on Tuesday to say that the alliance will not install anything of the kind in Ukraine or other eastern European countries. Point to Putin, whose ultimate goal is the promise that the military club will no longer expand to the east.
Then things are more difficult, but the situation on the ground and the risk of military action can weigh heavily. Politically, Putin sought the support of Xi, with whom he shares an increasing war cooperation, in view of the perception that the US will act actively to contain Beijing and Moscow.
The situation is delicate throughout the region from the Black Sea to the Baltic. In the first, the scene of an unfriendly meeting between the Russians and the British in June, a French frigate was monitored by Putin’s forces in Crimea.
Last week, Russian fighter jets intercepted fighter and spy planes from Paris and Washington in the region.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president spoke to Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi to ask for support. In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Volodimir Zelenski had complained of German vetoes on the supply of some types of weapons to Ukraine, something that Berlin did not confirm.
Comparing the current crisis with that of 2014, Zelenski painted a grim picture, saying there would be “much more losses” in the event of a Russian invasion.
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