The Secretary General of NATO is convening the Foreign Ministers of the 30 member states for an extraordinary meeting next Friday. Next week, several meetings have been agreed with Russia, which demands that NATO withdraw forces from Russia’s neighboring countries.
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The ministers will discuss Russia’s military build-up in and around Ukraine as well as other, broader European security issues, it is stated in a press release from NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.
The background for the emergency call is a series of meetings agreed with Russia in the following days. VG has previously mentioned two documents which Russian President Vladimir Putin has shared with the United States and NATO, where he wants significant changes in Western security cooperation.
Military threat
Russian leaders have threatened to use military force if the United States and NATO countries refuse.
Over time, Russia has also amassed a large military force, more than 100,000 troops and materiel, near Russia’s border with Ukraine. One of Putin’s demands is a written guarantee that Ukraine can never join NATO.
Since the list of demands became public on 17 December, Stoltenberg has been in close contact with the governments of the member countries worked to formulate a response to Russia.
Then the attitude was clear: NATO would reject any demand to deny Ukraine itself the choice of its future security policy anchor – although it is clearly not relevant to offer Ukraine any membership in the foreseeable future.
Would dissolve NATO
On Monday, Stoltenberg received clear advice from his predecessor as Secretary General of NATO. Anders Fogh Rasmussen published a post on the website Politico, in which he warned the alliance against giving in to Putin’s demands:
“We can not negotiate with a gun aimed at us,” writes Fogh Rasmussen.
He says this from his first meeting as Secretary General of NATO, with Putin:
“He opened the meeting by telling me that he wanted to disband NATO,” the former secretary general wrote.
A series of meetings
On January 9 and 10, diplomats from the United States and Russia will meet in Geneva for talks, following several digital meetings between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin.
On 12 January, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg invited Russia to a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, which has not met since the summer of 2019. As Russia has severed its formal diplomatic relations with NATO and closed its delegation to the Defense Alliance in Brussels, it is probably Russia’s ambassador to Belgium who meets for Russia.
Later next week, meetings have also been agreed on the situation in Ukraine, in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the OSCE.
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