NEGOTIATIONS – Russia has proposed to ban NATO enlargement and the establishment of US military bases in all non-NATO former USSR countries. The United States said it was “ready to discuss” despite some proposals deemed “unacceptable”.
E.Ro with AFP –
“Relaunch the relationship [russo-occidentale] from a blank page “: this is the objective displayed by Russia after having unveiled two texts on Friday including proposals for treaties to limit American and NATO influence in its neighboring countries, and in particular in Ukraine.
The documents presented to the press by Sergei Riabkov, the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, plan to ban any NATO enlargement and not to carry out any “military activity on the territory of Ukraine and in other countries of Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia”. The official also proposed treaties to prohibit the establishment of American military bases in all the countries of the former USSR that are not members of NATO, to use the infrastructures there. “for any military activity” and even “develop bilateral military cooperation” with these states.
Addressing “total lack of trust”
“It is essential that security guarantees for Russia are written down on paper and have the force of law”, said Sergei Riabkov to justify these proposals. The Minister then proposed the opening of negotiations as soon as “Saturday, December 18”, wishing they would take place in Geneva.
In “total lack of confidence” mutual and taking into account the policy “agressive” of NATO “in the vicinity of Russia”, these treaties could make it possible to re-establish Russian-Western cooperation and “relaunching the relationship from a blank page”, he stressed.
President Vladimir Putin had already called for negotiations on Tuesday “immediate” on the guarantees to be given to Russia for its security. In early December, he also asked his American counterpart Joe Biden for such legal guarantees.
The United States “ready to discuss”
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki reacted to the proposals by assuring that there would be no “no discussions on European security without our allies and European partners”. She also dismissed everything “compromise” on “the fact that all countries have the right to decide their own future and their foreign policy without being subject to outside influence”.
The United States, however, said “ready to discuss”, although Russian documents include “some things the Russians know are unacceptable”, a senior US official told reporters. And “if there is one more aggression in Ukraine, it will have massive consequences, and it will be very expensive”, he warned.
He finally indicated that the United States would present “next week a more concrete proposal” on the format of the discussions, after consulting their European allies. “We are thinking about how to do this so that the countries concerned are at the negotiating table”, he explained.
A future invasion of Ukraine?
Indeed, these documents are published against a backdrop of growing Russo-Western tensions around Ukraine, a country neighboring Russia. Washington, NATO and the European Union accuse Moscow of having massed tens of thousands of soldiers on Ukraine’s borders in recent weeks with a view to a possible invasion and threaten Russia with unprecedented sanctions. The Kremlin rejected these accusations and said it was threatened by NATO, which is arming Kiev and increasing its military presence in the Black Sea region.
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Moscow has already annexed Ukrainian Crimea and is widely seen as the godfather of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, where civil strife has claimed some 13,000 lives since 2014. Russia has also defeated Georgia in a short war in 2008. The West refused to close NATO’s door to these two countries, but they also de facto froze the membership process.