Russian President Vladimir Poutine called on Tuesday for “immediate” negotiations with NATO and the United States on guarantees to be given to Russia for its security, against a backdrop of tensions around Ukraine. “Vladimir Putin stressed the need for the immediate launch of negotiations with the United States and NATO in order to define the legal guarantees for the security of our country,” the Kremlin wrote in a statement after an exchange with the head of the Finnish state Sauli Niinistö, whose country is a traditional intermediary between Russia and its Western rivals.
Avoiding NATO enlargement to eastern Europe
The Russian president hammered home the same message in an individual interview with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron. For Vladimir Poutine, such talks should make it possible “to exclude the future enlargement of the Alliance in the East and the deployment of weapons systems threatening Russia in Ukraine and in other neighboring states”.
In a videoconference interview in early December, he asked Joe Biden for legal guarantees of this type, Moscow believing that the West, by opening the Alliance to countries in Eastern Europe and the former USSR from of 1999, violated promises made after the fall of the Soviet Union to stem Russian influence. For their part, Washington and the EU have warned Moscow that in the event of an armed incursion into Ukraine, Russia would face unprecedented economic sanctions, even though retaliatory measures of this type have so far and failed. since 2014 no effect on Russian policy.
Ukraine’s accession, a red line for Russia
The West has also refused to rule out any NATO enlargement, while Ukraine’s accession is a red line for Russia. Moscow had already annexed the Ukrainian peninsula from Crimea in reaction to a pro-Western revolution in 2014. The Kremlin is also considered the political, economic and military godfather of the pro-Russian separatists with whom the Ukrainian forces have been at war for almost eight years in eastern Ukraine.
It is in this context, moreover, that Russia is again suspected among Westerners of preparing an invasion of this country, deploying considerable forces at their common border. The Kremlin rejects these accusations and says on the contrary that Russia is under the threat of NATO, which is arming Kiev and increasing the deployments of air and sea assets in the Black Sea region. On Tuesday again, the Russian army announced that it had carried out “surveillance” of a French frigate entering the Black Sea. Last week, she assured to have intercepted several French and American aircraft.
Putin accuses Ukraine of violating Minsk accords
In his interview with his Finnish counterpart, Vladimir Poutine has finally again accused the Ukrainian authorities of violating the Minsk agreements which establish a roadmap towards peace in the conflict in eastern Ukraine (Donbass region). According to him, the Ukrainian authorities “are clearly betting on force, using heavy weapons and attack drones in the Donbass”. For its part, if Ukraine had said it was satisfied with the firmness of Joe Biden during his meeting with Mr. Putin, it has not stopped for months complaining about the unwillingness of the West to support him in the practice.
Thus, Kiev denounces the blocking of the process of joining the Atlantic Alliance and the obstacles to the delivery of weapons systems. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in particular accused Berlin of hampering these supplies. “Germany recently prevented us from obtaining shipments of anti-drone rifles and anti-sniper systems as part of (cooperation with) NATO and which are exclusively defensive weapons,” said Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which the Ukrainian presidency has made public in full. “Any democratic state which protects itself against aggression must have the right to acquire this kind of defensive instrument. But, in certain capitals, it is always fear that dominates,” he said.