Talks between U.S. and Russian officials on Monday, as analysts had expected, were fruitless.
Today, talks between NATO and Russian officials in Brussels have just concluded.
01 Is there a result of the NATO-Russia talks?
Nato officials held talks with a Russian delegation on Wednesday as nearly 100,000 Russian troops gathered near the Ukrainian border to try to stop a Russian invasion and ease tensions between Moscow and the West, according to The New York Times.
The meeting, which lasted about four hours at NATO headquarters in Brussels, was the second leg of a diplomatic roadshow around the Kremlin following talks between Russian and U.S. officials in Geneva on Monday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to pressure the West to push back its presence in Eastern Europe. The question now is whether Russia will invade Ukraine or de-escalate tensions. This has become an urgent issue in this high-level diplomatic campaign.
The United States and its NATO allies hope that Putin will decide to negotiate because he now faces the threat of punitive economic sanctions and even new deployments by NATO allies bordering Russia.
NATO officials are not optimistic about this, and they are skeptical of the seriousness of Moscow's diplomatic settlement commitments. Still, they said broader issues related to European security could be discussed with Russia, including nuclear stockpiles, missile deployments, restrictions on Conventional European forces, better maritime and air safety, and greater transparency in military exercises.
NATO categorically rejected Russia's demands. Russia demands that NATO stop further expanding cooperation with countries wishing to join NATO and withdraw all all allied forces from NATO member states bordering Russia. Ukraine is not yet a member of NATO, although NATO promised in 2008 that it would one day join.
At the end of the talks, Wendy R. Sherman, the undersecretary of state who led the U.S. talks in Geneva, tweeted: "I reaffirm the fundamental principle of the international system and European security: every country has the sovereign right to choose its own path." ”
02 Details of the talks
The Brussels talks were reportedly chaired by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. The Russian delegation was led by Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr V. Grushko. He served as Russia's Permanent Representative to NATO from 2012 to 2018.
This is a formal meeting between the NATO-Russia Council. The Council was established in 2002 to discuss common security issues. But since Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in April 2014, it has largely stalled.
NATO has 30 members, so in a sense, this meeting is 30 to 1. But NATO officials said they intended to listen and respond to Russia's grievances and suggestions.
They also plan to elaborate ON complaints about Russia's violation of previous agreements such as the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty and the treaty governing Europe's medium-range nuclear missiles. Both agreements could be renegotiated for the benefit of both parties.
NATO officials stress that they want to focus on Russia's massive, sustained military buildup around Ukraine, rather than Russia's desire to force Europe to renegotiate the post-Cold War security architecture.
After Monday's talks, the leader of the Russian side, Sergei A. Ryabkov) denied that Russia had any intention of conducting a new military invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, Ryabkov warned that if the West did not agree to Russia's demands, let NATO withdraw from Eastern Europe, and rejected any future membership of Ukraine, it would face unclear consequences, putting "the security of the entire Continent at risk."
Ahead of Wednesday's meeting, Glushko told reporters, "A critical moment in our relationship with NATO is coming," Russian news agencies reported. ”
03 Lately, Western analysts have been busy
What exactly does Russian President Vladimir Putin want? Western analysts have been eagerly studying the issue in recent months as Putin has stationed about 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border while making a series of demanding demands on the United States, listed in a draft treaty.
On Nikkei Asia's website, Andrew North calls this fear "a fictional victim narrative." What Putin would not say is that, especially at home, NATO members have voted to join their own free will on the Russian border. ”
Gideon Rahman
The Financial Times' Gideon Rachman speculates that Russia is not under any threat from NATO, but that the legitimacy of Putin's popularity at home is being undermined – not that another invasion of Ukraine will "ensure the survival of the Putin system, just as the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 ensured the survival of the Soviet Union".
This Gideon Rahman is no idle man. He is a British journalist. In July 2006, he became Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator for the Financial Times. In 2016, he won the Orwell Political Journalism Award. In the same year, he won the Commentator Award at the European Journalism Awards.
Of course, some analysts are also putting aside their motives and exploring another issue. That's it: What can the United States and Europe do? Washington threatened to impose tough economic sanctions on Russia if it invaded Ukraine again, but Chris Miller wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that Moscow was not threatened. He is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel who served as Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense from November 9, 2020 to January 20, 2021.
Chris Miller
Miller wrote: "There is no doubt that the Russian stock market and currency have changed little after Biden administration officials escalated their threats. Markets shrugged collectively, reflecting the Kremlin's view that the United States would not enforce the harsh sanctions it had discussed. Russian policymakers know that many of the tactics that could seriously hurt Russia — such as restricting Russian goods exports or blacklisting Russian banks — will also be costly for Western countries, making it uncertain whether Biden will deliver on those threats. Finally, tough economic sanctions will require China's acquiescence, which could create a range of other problems for the United States. ”
04 When will Putin decide?
Tomorrow, there is a third game! In Vienna! It would be a regular meeting of the 57-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, with Ukraine included.
While the meeting will be held at a lower diplomatic level — by ambassadors rather than foreign ministers and other senior officials — the organization known as the OSCE is important. If Russia decides to achieve its goals through diplomacy instead of going to war again in Ukraine, some negotiations on future European security will take place with the support of the group.
This organization is a reasonable place to consider any new or revised treaty on European security.
According to the New York Times analysis, it remains unclear whether Russia will choose the diplomatic route and no immediate decision is expected. Russia is currently discussing its grievances with the United States and its European allies; and both sides stress that this is not yet a negotiation.
So when will the decision be made? Serious negotiations could take months, and both the United States and NATO say they will only negotiate with Russia if it eases tensions and redeploys its forces currently deployed on the Ukrainian border away from the border.
Both Americans and Russians have said that after this week, they will discuss whether to continue negotiations, how to continue negotiations, and whether those discussions will lead to negotiations.
That is, unless Putin decides to argue that Washington and its allies are not taking Russia's demands seriously and choose to use this week as an excuse to wage war.
epilogue
Writing on a website, Maxim A. Suchov argues that Mr. Putin wants to reformulate post-Cold War European security arrangements — and that there really is no turning back, as Ukraine's growing Westernization could put Western military and intelligence assets on Russia's borders. Maxim Sukov is a senior researcher and associate professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University).
This may represent the view of most people in Russia, right? In fact, no one knows: What kind of medicine is sold in this Putin gourd? It is clear that his demands will not be met. So, what happens next? The views of the above analysts are, of course, all reasonable. However, in any case, this number will continue to pay attention, so stay tuned! (End)