In the first of a series of meetings to discuss the crisis in Ukraine, the diplomacy chiefs of NATO’s 30 members agreed that the Western military alliance must give a “strong response” if Russia invades its neighbour.
The rhetoric is in line with that of recent weeks, but sets the tone for what must be a difficult week of negotiations with the government of Vladimir Putin.
For the Secretary General of NATO, the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, “the risk of conflict is real”. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken used the term “strong response” to define what NATO should do in the event of Russian action.
Since November, Putin has deployed around 100,000 men and weapons in positions relatively close to Ukrainian borders. He says he is reacting to NATO’s move to arm Kiev, and seeks a solution to the conflict in the east of the country that would keep Ukraine from joining the alliance.
In doing so, it aims to maintain a strategic buffer between itself and Europe. He already has it in Belarus, where the dictatorship began to be guided from Moscow after years of double play by leader Aleksandr Lukachenko, who saw his position threatened by protests and appealed to the ally.
In 2014, Putin annexed Crimea and fueled the civil war that spawned pro-Kremlin autonomous areas in eastern Ukraine. In the current movement, he went further and issued an ultimatum to the West, calling for an end to NATO expansion and the withdrawal of alliance forces from countries that joined it after 1997.
That is, the entire bloc that was either Soviet (Baltic States) or communist ally. This will not be accepted by NATO, which will lead either to an impasse or to a round of possible other concessions.
They will begin to be discussed on Monday (10) in Geneva, with the meeting of a Russian delegation with an American one. On Wednesday, Brussels will host the main event of the week, a meeting of the almost defunct NATO-Russia Council, established to facilitate dialogue between parties that today do not even have diplomatic representatives on either side.
On Thursday, in Vienna, there will be a meeting of the 57 countries of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), an entity in which NATO members, Russia and Ukraine participate. And the Western military alliance will again meet virtually, this time with its defense ministers.
Stoltenberg, of course, said the goal is to find a peaceful solution. Blinken went in the same direction, but remembering the threats of economic sanctions made by his boss, President Joe Biden, in the two virtual conversations he had with Putin. But, in emphasizing the role of NATO, he added a degree or two to the temperature of the crisis, given that the alliance is solely responsible for the military dimension of the problem.
The American also said he questioned the nature of Russian intervention in the crisis in Kazakhstan, where the local government is trying to crush protests and has requested troops from the post-Soviet version of NATO, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, to help its mission.
Dozens of people have already died, and the bulk of the Kremlin-led troops, around 2,500 soldiers, arrived in the country on Friday. Critics see this as an opportunity for Putin to strengthen himself against Europe as a Central Asian peacemaker, but there is the fact that a continued crisis would drain his strength in the struggle with NATO.
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