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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba congratulated the US Secretary of State on Tuesday on Kiev’s “unity” with the West once morest the “ultimatums” launched by Moscow during the Russian-American discussions the day before. in Swiss. Washington is wondering, for its part, if Russia is “ready to seriously negotiate”.
In the absence of progress with Moscow, the Russian-American discussions in Switzerland reassured theUkraine who welcomed, Tuesday, January 11, his “unity” with the West.
“The talks in Geneva (Monday) showed that our strength was in unity and coherence of positions in the face (…) of Russian ultimatums,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba said during an interview telephone with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the day following the meeting of Wendy Sherman, number two in American diplomacy, with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov.
Dmytro Kouleba, who stressed that the United States remained his country’s essential security partner, and Antony Blinken on this occasion discussed the next steps in order to dissuade Moscow from launching an attack on Ukraine, which is fighting a pro-Russian separatist rebellion in the east of its territory since 2014.
Doubts regarding the seriousness of Russia
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki meanwhile cast doubts on the real intentions of Russia regarding these negotiations.
It is “too early to say whether the Russians (…) are ready to seriously negotiate”, Moscow can “use these talks to pretend diplomacy is not working” and continue its “aggressive” actions, said Jen Psaki during a press briefing.
“The relations of theOtan with Ukraine only look at Ukraine and the thirty allied countries “within this organization,” she repeated.
>> To read: Why Russia considers itself threatened by NATO
Moscow continues to demand written guarantees to exclude Ukraine, as well as Georgia, another former Soviet republic, from joining the Atlantic Alliance.
An important meeting Wednesday in Brussels
In the end, the Geneva talks only resulted in the promise of new contacts between Russians and Americans.
A NATO-Russia Council meeting, involving high-ranking diplomats from Alliance members and representatives from Moscow, is scheduled for Wednesday in Brussels, the first since July 2019.
The United States and its allies previously consulted on Tuesday in the Belgian capital.
Paris, for its part, mentioned Tuesday a meeting of the Normandy group (France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine) “by the end of January” as well as a “gesture” from Kiev to try to relaunch the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict.
The Kremlin’s envoy in the peace negotiations in Ukraine, Dmitri Kozak, “gave his agreement so that we resume negotiations in the Normandy group at the level of diplomatic advisers”, declared the French presidency. “We expect to be able to hold a first meeting (at this level) by the end of January.”
The foreign ministers of the member states of the European Union will discuss European proposals on security in Europe on Thursday and Friday. This meeting will be “the opportunity to decide together on the next steps that we wish to give to our involvement in the dialogue with Russia,” said a French diplomatic source.
With AFP
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