Dim prospects over security in Europe

Brussels – Nato and Russia confronted their stark divide over security in Europe after a new round of security talks between Russia and the United States concluded in Geneva, with the two sides showing no sign of narrowing differences on Ukraine and other security issues.

Russia’s massive troop build-up on Ukraine’s borders has forced Washington to engage diplomatically with bilateral security talks in Geneva on Monday, a Nato-Russia meeting on Wednesday and another planned at the OSCE in Vienna on Thursday.

The allies challenging President Vladimir Putin to pull troops back from Ukraine and join talks to reduce the threat of open conflict. Ties between Russia and US forecast dim prospects for a breakthrough in talks as the two countries’ values and strategic goals diverge.

The Kremlin said that any US sanctions targeting Russian President Vladimir Putin personally would be “crossing a line” and could see relations between the countries severed after US senators from President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party threatened major consequences if Russia invades Ukraine, including sanctions on President Vladimir Putin, Russian banks, and $500 million in fresh security aid to Kyiv.

Russia has repeatedly voiced concern over the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the alliance’s deployment of weapons systems near the country’s borders.

Putin’s government has demanded the West rule out accepting new members like Ukraine, Georgia or Finland on its eastern flank and wants limits on allied deployments in the former Soviet allies like Poland and the Baltic states that joined Nato after the Cold War.

Meeting senior Kremlin envoys at Nato headquarters in Brussels, Western ambassadors said Moscow would have no veto on Ukraine nor on any other country joining the alliance and warned it would pay a high price if it invaded.

“Russia most of all will have to decide whether they really are about security, in which case they should engage, or whether this was all a pretext, and they may not even know yet,” US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said.

The Western allies have received no promise that Russia will stand down its forces, which Moscow insists pose no threat to its already partially-occupied neighbor, despite their threatening massive economic sanctions if the Kremlin unleashes an invasion.

Instead, the 30 member states invited the Russian envoys to return to Moscow and to advise Putin to join them for a series of confidence-building talks on limiting provocative military exercises, arms control and reciprocal limits on deploying missiles. “Russia was not in a position to agree on that proposal. They didn’t reject it either, but the Russian representatives made it clear that they needed some time to come back to Nato with an answer,” alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned: “There are significant differences between Nato allies and Russia on these issues,” he warned.

Stoltenberg said it would be impossible for Nato members to agree to Moscow’s core demands for a new security order in Europe, and in particular added that Russia would have no veto on Ukraine’s right to eventually join the alliance.

Russia said that security talks between Moscow and Nato in Brussels were “frank”, but indicated there had been no breakthrough, stressing the two sides had a lot of “fundamental” disagreements.

“It was a heart to heart,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told reporters after the talks in Brussels.

The West defends Nato’s “open-door policy” towards potential future members, while Moscow is demanding a cast-iron guarantee that the alliance will not expand further towards its territory, seeing the westward tilt of one-time Warsaw Pact or Soviet allies as a threat.

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