“If the rather aggressive line of our Western colleagues is continued, we will respond with adequate military-technical measures and react harshly to the unfriendly steps,” Putin said on Tuesday at a meeting of the Defense Ministry in Moscow.
He again campaigned for his initiative with NATO and the USA to provide Russia with legally binding security guarantees. Specifically, Putin is calling for NATO to renounce further eastward expansion, including the admission of Ukraine as a member. He made it clear again that Russia sees its security threatened by the progress of NATO. Putin stressed that this was “not an ultimatum”, but an offer to talk.
On the other hand, in the Ukraine, President Volodymyr Selenskyj reiterated his call for rapid accession to NATO in view of the tensions with Russia. “We want NATO to have a very clear temporal perspective. A very concrete one. And we want to receive this in 2022, ”he said in a speech to all Ukrainian ambassadors on Tuesday. EU membership should also be achieved in the next few years. Both have been anchored in the Ukrainian constitution as a goal since 2019.
At the meeting with Putin, Moscow’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu criticized the growing militarization of Ukraine and an increase in maneuvers on Russia’s borders. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke at a press conference and warned the US and the West as a whole against crossing “red lines”. NATO must not come any closer to Russia’s borders.
Putin accused the US of bearing responsibility for the current tensions in Europe. “They do what they want,” said the Kremlin chief, referring to US activities in Ukraine. “After all, that’s on the threshold of our house. You should understand that there is simply nowhere we can go to. ” The US and NATO, on the other hand, accuse Russia of having relocated tens of thousands of soldiers near the border with Ukraine.