Putin and Biden will meet again soon
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As early as January, talks between Moscow and Washington will begin in Geneva on Moscow’s demands to abandon NATO’s further eastward expansion.
Moscow demands from the West guarantees not to include Ukraine in NATO. The Americans answer that they are ready for negotiations, but they are not going to decide the fate of Ukraine and other Eastern European countries behind their backs. Meanwhile, analysts, including prominent US foreign policy experts, say the US and its allies must respond harder to Russia’s ultimatums and, among other things, put forward counter demands.
New Yalta
The Yalta Agreement of 1945, according to which the victorious powers, the USSR, Britain and the United States, divided spheres of influence in Europe, recalled one of the most famous American experts on Russia, former ambassador to Moscow, and now a professor at Stanford University, Michael McFaul.
“As it becomes clear from the draft treaty between the United States and Russia, Putin wants to reproduce the Yalta agreement of 1945,” McFaul wrote in article in the Washington Post… – In this new version of the agreement, the US and Russia (this time without Britain) would divide Europe into spheres of influence. This is completely unacceptable. “
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that his country should also participate in the negotiations. “The first and main topic of a conversation between the United States, the EU or NATO with Russia should be the end of the international armed conflict in Europe, the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Kuleba
Helsinki 2.0
“We need Helsinki 2.0, not Yalta 2.0, so that smaller European countries can be sure that Moscow and Washington will not discuss anything concerning them without their participation,” McFaul writes about this. In addition, the ex-ambassador, in the course of polemics with Moscow, proposes to insert several counter demands into the draft treaty proposed by her. Russia, in his opinion, should:
– withdraw troops from Transnistria;
– to withdraw the recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and thereby facilitate the start of negotiations on the restoration of the territorial integrity of Georgia;
– return to compliance with many international treaties, primarily those that prohibit annexations, and return Crimea to Ukraine, as well as end support for separatists in eastern Ukraine;
– remove tactical nuclear weapons and Iskander ballistic missiles from the Kaliningrad region, from where they can hit targets in Europe in a matter of minutes;
– to pledge to end the theft of digital property, as well as support for anti-democratic forces in the West and “stop disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining free and fair elections and democracy in general”;
– to undertake to stop killing opponents abroad and on their territory, as well as to curtail support for Alexander Lukashenko.
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