The United States has formally rejected Russian proposals to try to resolve the crisis with Ukraine on the terms desired by Vladimir Putin. They say that war or peace in the European country now depends on the Russian reaction and that they are “prepared anyway”.
The statements were made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, responsible for the country’s diplomacy, in an interview in Washington. At the same time, talks between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France in Paris only resulted in an agreement for a new meeting in Berlin.
Blinken did not elaborate on the document handed over to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov because he relies on “confidential conversations”. In a sign that it says it fears an imminent conflict, the US embassy in Kiev has urged all its citizens to leave the country.
The American response was predictable and remained open to conversation. “We are open to dialogue,” said Blinken. Then, without going into detail, he spoke about the demands put forward in writing by Putin:
- 1) Expansion of NATO. The Kremlin wants the military alliance to return to its size before the absorption of ex-Communist members, starting in 1999. Blinken said no.
- 2) Entry from Ukraine. Putin wanted a commitment that the alliance would never reach his doors on the great border with the Ukrainians. Blinken said no and stressed that he does not give up Kiev’s territorial sovereignty.
- 3) Other topics. Here is the way out of the imbroglio, if it exists with military exercises involving thousands of Russians on three sides of Ukraine. Blinken said he was open to further dialogue and cited topics such as nuclear disarmament and monitoring of mutual military exercises.
The problem is that all this had already been put on the table before, in three weeks of different negotiations. The US secretary said he would speak with Lavrov again, as soon as the chancellor talks to Putin about the obvious: the impasse continues.
Perhaps most importantly, Blinken insisted there will be reciprocal talks “if Russia de-escalates its forces” around Ukraine — from 100,000 to 175,000 troops deployed since November, insufficient for a full-scale invasion but adequate for actions such as the eventual annexation of the Donbass.
The region in eastern Ukraine is at the center of the crisis. In 2014, Putin annexed Crimea and helped pro-Russian rebels there in a civil war that has killed 14,000 people as the government that supported him in Kiev was overthrown. For the Kremlin, Ukraine and the rest of its surroundings have to be neutral or allied — as they were in the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire. Politically, after all, an improved Kiev with broad Western support could be sold to the Russians as an example of what to do with their own country.
Finally, Putin shares the Russian elite’s notion that Ukraine is not so much a country, but a piece of Russia. In Belarus, which shares ethnic, linguistic and cultural ties with its two neighbors, the merger process is accelerating due to the Kremlin’s support for the dictatorship’s repression of the opposition.
There was no immediate response from Moscow. In Paris, an eight-hour meeting between Russian, Ukrainian, German and French representatives did not come to a conclusion, but a new meeting has been scheduled for two weeks from now in Berlin. Time gained, despite Russian pressure on the borders. “These were not easy conversations,” said Dmitri Kozak, the Moscow envoy.
The Kremlin’s tone, however, had been set by Lavrov in a speech hours earlier at the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. “If the West continues its aggressive course, Moscow will take the necessary retaliatory measures,” he said. “We’re not going to let our proposals get drowned in endless discussions.”
And Blinken, repeating what had been said before, basically proposed an endless discussion. In addition, he reeled off the rosary of weapons delivered to the Ukrainians recently, such as Javelin anti-tank systems, designed to face Russian armored vehicles.
The US, he said, is committed to helping Kiev defend itself. In practice, this could increase the bill for Putin, but it would not prevent an at least initial victory for Moscow — even if occupying is one thing, as Machiavelli said, and holding territory is another.
At the Kremlin, spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that the Joe Biden administration’s threat to apply sanctions against top Russian officials, perhaps even Putin, “politically, it is not painful, it is destructive”, noting that the practical effect would be null, since that authorities in the country cannot have assets abroad — officially, of course.
A key to the future of the crisis, if it does not degenerate into an armed conflict, since for Putin the simple withdrawal is not a palatable option, lies in the confidential nature given by the US to the document and the next rounds of talks. There may be different accommodations.
Putin can put his foot down and, instead of acting militarily as he always said he would not do, apply other measures: open a permanent base in Belarus, perhaps with nuclear weapons, explore sending troops or weapons to his allies in the US backyard, Cuba and Venezuela.
These would be “military-technical” replacements, as Russian jargon says. In the meantime, confidentially, it could negotiate some sort of moratorium on the entry of new Eastern members into NATO, something that has already been vetoed in practice because both Ukraine and Georgia have active territorial conflicts.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg lunged at Putin after Blinken’s speech. He told CNN that he praised the US readiness for dialogue, but recalled that Russia should withdraw its troops from Ukrainian, Georgian and Moldovan soil – where it supports a separatist enclave called Transnistria.
The same Stoltenberg, on the other hand, said that Russia and NATO should re-establish diplomatic ties to open channels of negotiation, which can be sold in Moscow as a victory, at least to the domestic public.
Radicals from side to side came face to face. The leader of United Russia, Putin’s support party in Parliament, has called on the Kremlin to supply weapons to the Donbass rebels, for example. In addition, the US maintained threats of economic sanctions if Russia decides to invade its neighbor. Nothing new, and the Kremlin’s resistance since 2014 has raised questions about the effectiveness of the measures.
Politically, Putin has thus far achieved a secondary objective in the crisis, which is to expose the internal divisions of European NATO members. On Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his Russian counterpart would be “reckless” if he decided to invade his neighbor and promised that Turkey, as a member of the alliance, would “do whatever it takes” if war breaks out. The United Kingdom, according to the British newspaper The Telegraph, is considering sending troops to Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, Germany, Europe’s biggest customer for Russian gas, has taken an ambiguous line in the crisis. With a newly elected government, the country saw its navy commander resign for saying that Putin was a respectable force and that Crimea would never return to Ukraine.
In the European Parliament, a session on Wednesday questioned, according to reports, the installation of an EU military training mission in Ukraine, led by Germany. Berlin, which has already done something similar in African countries, has not yet taken on the task.
The German government has in its hands one of the biggest instruments to put pressure on Putin: the authorization to operate the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which connects Russia to the country.
It was ready in September and, when it operates, it will be able to take a good part of the flow of the product that now passes through Ukraine – leaving US$ 2 billion in annual tolls. Blinken complained about the transformation of the commodity into a weapon of war and again promised supply options to Europe.
On Wednesday night, Ned Price, a spokesman for the US State Department, added: “I will be very clear: if Russia invades Ukraine one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not be operational. I will not give details. We will work with Germany to ensure that he does not progress.”
