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Russia has asked Nato to rescind its 2008 pact to recognize Ukraine and Georgia as part of a security deal that Washington hopes to prevent Moscow from taking over the southern neighbor.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Friday unveiled a series of pledges that provide detailed information so far on “red lines” Vladimir Putin wants to lay the groundwork for a new European defense.
US President Joe Biden has agreed to discuss Putin’s concerns with the Transatlantic military alliance with a group of Nato members following suit. singing on video between the two leaders on Tuesday.
The US has it warned allies that Putin had assembled 175,000 troops from the northern, eastern, and southern frontiers of Ukraine in preparation for an attack that officials say could be the worst in Europe since World War II.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said Moscow’s relations with the West are “at a critical juncture”, blaming the US and the EU for “conducting” military tests near Russia’s borders and for supplying weapons to Ukraine.
It also accused the West of “pulling Ukraine to Nato”, which it said could lead to the sending of weapons and troops that could be used against Russia from Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, has made the plan to become a member of Nato the basis of his foreign policy.
Nato Secretary-General at the time said in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would one day become members but that the alliance had not set a deadline and had not signed up for any member states.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said it wants legal guarantees that the promise will no longer apply, as well as other agreements that Nato will not ship weapons to Russia’s border, exercise more than a mile from Russia, and establish long-distance shipping. in the Baltic and Black Sea.
It also called on the US to reconsider the Intermediate Nuclear Forces alliance, a Cold War agreement to ban space missiles with a distance of 500km-5,500km. when the Trump administration left in 2019.
Jen Psaki, a press secretary at the White House, on Friday denounced what Putin wanted to be a surprise. “It is the same list of demands that the Russian people have been promoting and speaking for several months, if not years, and that is their chance,” he said.
Jake Sullivan, a national security adviser, said Biden “clearly and concisely. . . did not negotiate or tolerate ”information about the exclusion of Ukraine from NATO in its talks earlier this week with Putin.
“He represents the idea that states should freely choose which they associate with,” Sullivan said.
US officials also say Biden has “revealed” that one country cannot force another country to change its borders.
“[One] “The state cannot tell anyone to change politics, and countries cannot tell others who can work with them,” the chief executive officer told reporters Thursday. Biden spoke with Zelensky and, separately, nine Nato allies on its eastern side.
The US government says it is “always” ready to talk about all security issues with Russia, however, and has named a number of nations to do so.
A NATO spokesman quoted former Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg as saying, “We follow our decisions and nothing has changed in the way NATO treats Ukraine’s membership,” the coalition official said in Paris on Friday. “It is up to Ukraine to decide its course, to decide whether it wants to become a member or not…
Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, told a news conference on Friday that Moscow did not expect the US to accept his offer immediately, but warned of the consequences if ignored.
“If our opponents on the other side – first of all the US, as well as other countries, the so-called US allies – refuse, trying to disrupt everything, they will face their own deteriorating security forces,” Ryabkov said.
Russia and the United States will discuss some of these issues as part of an ongoing debate on nuclear weapons, Ryabkov said.
“We must avoid a new missile crisis in Europe before it is too late,” he added.
Additional reports of Katrina Manson in Washington and Henry Foy in Brussels
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