The Russian leader demanded legal guarantees from the West that Ukraine will not join NATO. They replied that Russia does not have the right to vote on this issue.
Russia has begun military exercises in annexed Crimea and the regions bordering Ukraine amid ongoing reports of preparations for a full-scale offensive. The West threatened Moscow with “highly effective” sanctions, and Russian President Vladimir Putin recalled his main red line – NATO’s non-expansion to the east and proposed negotiations. Correspondent.net tells the details.
Putin demands legal guarantees
The Russian armed forces have begun the traditional winter exercises, which in 2021 are taking place partially in the annexed Crimea, as well as in the Russian regions bordering on Ukraine.
As reported by the press service of the Southern Military District of the Russian Federation on Wednesday, more than ten thousand servicemen from motorized rifle and tank units will take part in the maneuvers, some of them went to previously unused training grounds.
“In the field, about a third of the units of all formations and military units of the Southern Military District will begin the winter training period for the new academic year,” the message says.
The press service of the Southern Military District of the Russian Federation clarified that combat coordination of squads, crews and crews will take place in the first training module at 30 combined-arms training ranges. The personnel will be stationed at the autonomous field camps of the APL-500 on the basis of the main training grounds.
On December 2, the Command of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced the exercises of artillery units in the Kherson region near the administrative border with Crimea.
The ruler of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said on December 2 that in the next two months the Belarusian and Russian military will conduct exercises on the border with Ukraine. He added that the total Belarusian army numbers 65 thousand people, but it is possible that it will grow by five thousand, since it is necessary to “cover the south.”
The day before, he said that “he will not stand aside if the West again unleashes a war in Donbass.”
At the same time, the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova said at a briefing that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have significantly increased their presence in Donbass.
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine are building up their military force, pulling together heavy equipment, personnel. According to some reports, the number of troops in the conflict zone already reaches 125 thousand people, and this, if anyone does not know, is half of the entire composition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Zakharova said.
This was also stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov before flying to Sweden for a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of OSCE members, at which he promised to raise this issue. Among Lavrov’s interlocutors in Stockholm are US State Department Head Anthony Blinken and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba.
On the same day, December 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at the ceremony of presenting his credentials to the ambassadors of foreign countries, called the accusations of preparing a new aggression against Ukraine as irresponsible.
According to him, Russia “is taking adequate military-technical actions.” “It is not we who threaten someone, but the threats are approaching our borders,” the Russian president emphasized.
Putin recalled his main red line. He indicated that Russia and its partners would insist on the inadmissibility of NATO’s expansion to the east, in particular to Ukraine, Georgia and, apparently, the entire post-Soviet space.
“In a dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will insist on the development of specific agreements that would exclude any further NATO moves to the east and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in the immediate vicinity of the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
According to the Russian leader, Moscow “needs legal and legal guarantees.”
“We do not require any special conditions for ourselves. We understand that any agreements must certainly take into account both the interests of Russia and all Euro-Atlantic states. A calm, stable situation must be ensured for everyone and is needed by everyone,” Putin said.
This is reminiscent of Russia’s initiative twelve years ago. In 2009, after the war with Georgia, Moscow offered the West to sign a European Security Treaty.
This did not end with anything, but his draft can still be found on the Kremlin’s website, and in the document one can find, for example, the following clause: them or doesn’t support them. “
Such pressure from Moscow against the background of alarming news from the Ukrainian borders can be explained by the upcoming negotiations between Russia and the United States, before which the stakes are being raised.
On December 2, Lavrov and Blinken met in Stockholm. The main topic was the situation around Ukraine. Probably, the parties also discussed preparations for the meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin.
Note that Putin’s proposal presupposes the active work of diplomats, but now Russia and the West are in a state of “ambassadorial war” – the sides are reducing the number of employees of each other’s diplomatic missions, and Moscow has completely suspended the work of the mission to NATO.
“Russia has no right to vote”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was the first to respond to Putin’s proposal. After the meeting of the foreign ministers of the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance in Riga, he called unacceptable even the idea that Russia could have a sphere of influence, because its neighbors are sovereign states.
Stoltenberg noted that such a formulation of the question “reflects a thesis that should cause our suspicion and which is unacceptable.”
“This is the thesis that Russia has a sphere of interests. This means the de facto recognition that Russia can control what its neighbors, which are sovereign states, do,” he explained.
Russia “has no right” to demand that Ukraine never be admitted to NATO, its opinion is not taken into account, he stressed.
“The alliance said that one day Ukraine will become a NATO member. The decision on when this happens will be made by 30 NATO allies and Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
He specified that Ukraine can count on the support of the alliance, but not on “security guarantees and collective defense” that NATO members have.
“The ministers made it clear that any future invasion or aggression against Ukraine will have a high cost, economic and political consequences for Russia,” Stoltenberg said.
Summit participants welcomed Ukraine’s low-key response to Russian actions.
At the same time, the countries of the eastern flank of NATO believe that the alliance does not react vigorously enough to Russia’s maneuvers around Ukraine. Latvian Foreign Minister Edgar Rinkevich said at a summit in Riga that NATO did not even come close to what could be considered a “strong response” to Russia’s actions.
Ukraine has a special status of cooperation with NATO, an Enhanced Partner. The goal of this program is to enhance the interoperability of member countries’ forces with NATO forces.
It provides for regular political consultations on security issues, increased access to exercises and information exchange, and closer cooperation in times of crisis.
On the eve of the summit in Riga, Kuleba said that Ukraine expects to expand NATO support in the conflict with Russia. In particular, we are talking about sanctions, military cooperation and clearer communication.
“Highly effective” economic sanctions have been promised in the United States. “If Russia continues to follow the path of confrontation with respect to Ukraine, we made it clear that we will give a decisive response, which will include a number of highly effective economic measures, from which we have refrained so far,” Blinken said.
US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, who flew to Moscow in October to discuss Ukraine, said at the Kiev Security Forum on December 1 that Russia is threatened with sanctions “which have not yet taken place.”
“We are decisive in our message to Moscow: if they take steps to destabilize Ukraine and use their forces for aggression against Ukraine, there will be serious economic steps and sanctions that haven’t happened in the past,” she said via video link.
The secretary of state noted that there is evidence that Russia “has prepared plans for significant aggressive actions against Ukraine.”
“These plans include efforts to destabilize Ukraine from within, as well as large-scale military operations,” Blinken said in Riga.
It is not yet known whether Putin made the decision to invade, he said. “But we know that he created the ability to do it very quickly if he so chooses,” added the secretary of state.
News from Correspondent.net in Telegram. Subscribe to our channel https://t.me/korrespondentnet
– .
