NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said today that he had sent a letter Thursday to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for dialogue within the NATO-Russia Council to avoid a conflict in Ukraine, but warned Moscow of security concerns.
Stoltenberg told the Munich Security Conference that there was no evidence that Russia was withdrawing from Ukraine despite Moscow’s claims this week that it had begun withdrawing its troops, and that the risk of a conflict was real.
The NATO secretary-general said in a letter that he had asked Lavrov to agree to more talks at the NATO-Russia Council, which convened in January to formally discuss Moscow’s calls for allies to withdraw their troops from Eastern Europe. .
“I invited Russia and all NATO allies to meetings within the NATO-Russia Council. And I reiterated my invitation to the letter I sent to Minister Lavrov on Thursday,” he said.
“We are extremely concerned because we see that they are continuing to develop troops, they are continuing to prepare. And we have never seen in Europe, after the end of the Cold War, such a large concentration of troops on combat readiness,” he added.
In a rare acknowledgment of the limits of diplomacy, Stoltenberg also said that Moscow was seeking security guarantees that the Kremlin knew NATO could never satisfy.
Russia has sent tens of thousands of troops near its border with Ukraine, but has said it has no plans to invade. President Vladimir Putin is pushing for security guarantees, including Ukraine’s non-NATO membership. The Alliance, however, has replied that, under the terms of the United Nations, every nation is free to choose its alliances.
“So the danger now is to combine the mass growth of soldiers with very threatening rhetoric and making demands that they know we can not satisfy and say that if we do not satisfy them there will be military repercussions.”
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