Talks with a high stake: avoiding a conflict in Ukraine. The United States and Russia meet on Sunday evening in Geneva to try to defuse the explosive crisis that is playing out around this Eastern European country and, beyond that, to try to bring together visions apparently irreconcilable on security in Europe.
A high-risk diplomatic week, which will open with a face-to-face meeting between the Deputy Foreign Ministers of the two rival powers, the American Wendy Sherman and the Russian Sergei Riabkov. It will continue with a NATO-Russia meeting Wednesday in Brussels then a meeting Thursday in Vienna of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), to include Europeans who fear being marginalized.
Originally, the fear of a Russian invasion
Kiev and Moscow have been at daggers drawn since Russia’s annexation in 2014 of the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula, followed by a war in eastern Ukraine with pro-Russian separatists (more than 13,000 dead), including the The Kremlin is regarded, despite his denials, as a military godfather. And for several months, the West and Kiev have accused the Russians of having massed nearly 100,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian border with a view to a potential invasion.
The Kremlin’s demands
The Kremlin, for its part, claims that it is the West that provokes Russia by stationing soldiers at its gates or by arming Ukrainian soldiers who fight pro-Russian separatists in Donbass, in eastern Ukraine. He therefore calls for a major treaty excluding Ukraine’s entry into NATO and the withdrawal of American soldiers from the most eastern countries of the Atlantic Alliance. However, not only do the Americans claim that they are not ready to reduce their troops in Poland or the Baltic countries, but on the contrary they threaten to reinforce them if the Russians go on the offensive.
Westerners brandish threat of sanctions
The West has threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with “massive” and unprecedented sanctions if he attacks the neighboring country once more. These measures might go as far as cutting Russia off from the cogs of global finance or preventing the entry into service of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline dear to the Kremlin. The objective: to show that they are more determined this time than in 2014, when Moscow annexed Ukrainian Crimea without the American-European alliance being able to reverse it.
Russia excludes any “concession”
President Putin, who has met twice with his American counterpart Joe Biden since the start of this new crisis, warned that new sanctions would be a “colossal mistake”, and in turn threatened with a response ” military and technical “in case” of maintaining the very clearly aggressive line “of its rivals. Above all, he imposed and obtained to extend the dialogue to several of his demands which are nevertheless seen as so many red lines by the West.
This Sunday, Russia ruled out any “concession” during the talks. “We will not accept any concessions. This is completely excluded, ”Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov told Russian news agencies. “We are disappointed with the signals coming in recent days from Washington, but also from Brussels,” he added.
The United States’ warning
In response, the United States warned Russia of a risk of “confrontation.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on CNN that there was “a way of dialogue and diplomacy to try to resolve some of these differences and avoid confrontation” and that “the other way is that of confrontation. and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression once morest Ukraine ”. “We are regarding to see which path President Putin is ready to take,” he said.
“The risk of a new conflict is real,” warned NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday, noting that Moscow was putting forward “unacceptable” demands while increasing threats if they “are not accepted”. “It is certainly part of their strategy to present a list of absolutely inadmissible demands and then claim that the other side is not playing the game and use that as a justification for an aggression”, added the head of the American diplomacy Antony. Blinken. But he assured that the United States would not let itself be “distracted” by the “debate on NATO” demanded by Vladimir Poutine, because “the hot topic” is “his aggression once morest Ukraine”.
Europe wants to participate
From Paris to Berlin via Brussels, calls have multiplied to make a real place at the negotiating table for the countries of the Old Continent, and in particular the European Union – facing the Kremlin which seems to want to privilege the tête-à-tête. Russian-American. A test for the United States of Joe Biden, which, despite the promises of consultation, scalded their European allies by giving the impression of going it alone on Afghanistan or the anti-China strategy.
