Russia, US take uncompromising stands ahead of further talks on Ukraine

Members of the NATO alliance are set to meet with Russian officials in Brussels on Wednesday and more talks are planned at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna on Thursday.

The US warned that Russia will face unprecedented sanctions if it attacks Ukraine. (AFP)

Moscow and Washington have both taken uncompromising stands ahead of more talks amid a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, with the US rebuffing a demand to halt NATO expansion and the Kremlin saying it will quickly see if it's worthwhile to even keep negotiating.

At Monday’s talks in Geneva, Russia insisted on guarantees precluding NATO’s expansion to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations and demanded to roll back the military alliance’s deployments in Eastern Europe. The US firmly rejected the demands as a nonstarter.

The US envoy to NATO set a tough tone for the next talks with Moscow, ruling out any concessions on the alliance's eastward expansion.

“We will not allow anyone to slam NATO’s open-door policy shut,” said US Ambassador Julianne Smith on Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the Geneva talks as “open, comprehensive and direct,” but emphasised that Moscow wants quick results. ”We see no significant reason for optimism,” he told reporters.

Peskov said Russia-NATO talks in Brussels on Wednesday and a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday would show whether further negotiations are worthwhile.

Moscow says it has no plans to attack and rejects Washington’s demand to pull back its forces from its border with Ukraine, saying it has the right to deploy them wherever necessary.

 

 

'Military technical measures'

President Vladimir Putin has warned Moscow would take unspecified “military-technical measures” if the US and its allies don't meet its demands. 

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who led the Russian delegation in Geneva, said afterward that it would be hard to make any progress on other issues if the US and its allies stonewall Moscow’s demand for guarantees precluding NATO’s expansion.

The US and its allies reject the demand for NATO not to admit new members, emphasising that a key alliance principle is that membership is open to any qualifying country and no outsiders have veto power. 

But Washington and NATO also say they are ready to discuss arms control, confidence-building measures, greater transparency and risk reduction if Russia takes a constructive stance.

The US warned that Russia will face unprecedented sanctions if it attacks Ukraine. Amid the tensions, the Russian military said 3,000 troops were taking part in drills at firing ranges in the Voronezh, Belgorod, Bryansk and Smolensk regions near Ukraine.

In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula after the ouster of its Moscow-friendly leader and threw its weight behind a separatist uprising in the country's east, where more than seven years of fighting has killed over 14,000 people.

A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany has helped end large-scale battles, but frequent skirmishes have continued and efforts to negotiate a political settlement have failed.

Source: TRTWorld and agencies

 

 

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(With input from news agency language)

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