Russia courted all this attention by massing some 100,000 troops near its border with Ukraine, raising fears of a Russian invasion. Analysts read Russia’s buildup as an attempt to pressure the U.S. and its European allies into concessions on a series of far-reaching “security guarantees” sought by Moscow.

What does Russia want and why is it so hard for the U.S. to meet Moscow partway? Here’s a guide.

1. Russia wants a guarantee Ukraine can never join NATO
Russia’s main demand is a commitment from NATO to end its further expansion into former Soviet republics — especially Ukraine. Russia wants NATO to rescind a 2008 promise that Ukraine could someday join the defense alliance. Many observers see it as a distant prospect that Ukraine could join NATO because it doesn’t meet membership requirements. But Moscow doesn’t see it that way. “We don’t trust the other side,” Russia’s chief negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, said after bilateral talks with the U.S. finished Monday. “We need ironclad, waterproof, bulletproof, legally binding guarantees. Not assurances. Not safeguards. Guarantees. With all the words — ‘shall, must’ — everything that should be put in.”

Russia’s reasoning: President Vladimir Putin views Ukraine as an extension of what he calls “historical Russia” — a part of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, and within Moscow’s “sphere of influence” today. The threat of Ukraine’s westward turn after a street revolution ousted the country’s pro-Russian president in 2014 was the driving force behind Russia’s annexation of Crimea later that year. Ukraine’s desire to join the Western alliance also led to Russia’s sponsorship of separatists in the country’s eastern Donbas region — in effect sabotaging its path to membership by fueling a civil war.

NATO’s counter: The U.S. argues that countries have a right to choose their own alliances and NATO has a long-standing “open door policy” for potential membership. “NATO has never expanded through force or coercion or subversion. It is countries’ sovereign choice to choose to come to NATO and say they want to join,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Wednesday after a meeting between Russian and NATO officials in Brussels. Russia’s actions are making the idea of NATO membership more appealing to Ukrainians, according to opinion polls. It is unlikely, however, that Ukraine will meet the requirements anytime soon.

2. Russia wants NATO arms out of Eastern Europe
The draft proposals on security that Russia sent to Western powers in December would ban NATO from deploying its weapons and forces in countries in Central and Eastern Europe that joined the alliance after 1997. In effect, that would downgrade membership for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to symbolic status at best.

Russia’s reasoning: Moscow sees NATO’s addition of former communist countries in Eastern and Central Europe beginning in 1997 as violating a core promise by the United States when the Soviet ARMY peacefully withdrew from Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Putin’s view, the West took advantage of Russian weakness in expanding the alliance over multiple Russian objections. “And where is it written down on paper?” recalled Putin in recounting NATO’s decisions to expand eastward in subsequent years. “They would say to us. ‘It’s not on paper? Well then get lost along with your concerns.’ And that’s the way it’s been year after year.” Now Putin appears to be acting as if Russia is in a position to dictate new terms — and rewrite the story of the end of the Cold War.

NATO’s counter: U.S. officials have made clear they believe even Russia knows this demand is unrealistic. Acceding to Russia’s proposal would mean redrawing the map of Europe after the Cold War and placing Moscow’s security demands above the concerns of whole swaths of Europe that were once under Russian Soviet control. Western officials also contest the idea the alliance promised not to expand and say it was Russian actions that led NATO to beef up deployments in the new member states. “NATO never even had any forces on its eastern edge because we didn’t feel the need to have troops close to Russia until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and led NATO members to be concerned that they might keep going into NATO territory,” Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, said Tuesday.

3. Russia wants a ban on NATO missiles within striking distance
Russia says it wants a ban on intermediate-range missiles in Europe — in effect, reinstating a Cold War-era treaty abandoned in 2019 by the Trump administration, which accused Russia of repeated violations. Believing that the Biden administration is game for a deal, the Kremlin says it wants to bundle arms control progress with its other grievances against NATO expansion. “Are we putting our rockets near the borders of the United States? No we’re not,” argued Putin to a Western journalist during a press conference in December. “It’s the U.S. with its rockets coming to our doorstep.”

Russia’s reasoning: While Ukraine could be a long way from NATO membership today, Russia has nervously watched as NATO has demonstrated it can deepen its involvement in Ukraine — providing weapons and training — without the former Soviet republic becoming a member. Russia’s president has made no secret he envisions a day in the not-so-distant future when NATO missiles could be housed on Ukrainian soil within minutes’ striking distance from Moscow. “For us this is a serious challenge — a challenge to our security,” Putin said.

NATO’s counter: This could be an area of compromise. For starters, some Democratic lawmakers opposed the Trump administration’s decision to abandon the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia.

4. Russia wants autonomy for eastern Ukraine
Russia says Ukraine must meet its obligations under 2015 agreements to end THE fighting between Ukraine’s army and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine that has killed some 15,000 people. That peace deal, known as the Minsk agreements, has stalled and Ukrainians are killed practically every week, but it allowed Russia to largely keep up the fiction it is not a party to the war in the Donbas region. Moreover, the Minsk agreements would provide additional autonomy to the separatist Russian-speaking territories in the Donbas.

Russia’s reasoning: Moscow has long believed the U.S. calls the shots in Kyiv and the U.S. has expressed support for the Minsk accords as a path toward deescalation. Moreover, for Moscow, it’s a way to guarantee rights for Russian speakers in the Donbas — and provide the Kremlin leverage into Ukrainian affairs going forward.

NATO’s counter: The U.S. supports the Minsk agreements. Kyiv is less enthusiastic. The deal as signed rewards Russia for stirring up the conflict — meddling that Russia denies. Kyiv and Washington argue Moscow has also failed to meet obligations to the deal.

Michele Kelemen contributed to this explainer from Washington, D.C.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072413634/russia-nato-ukraine

The post 4 things Russia wants right now first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Vladimir Putin must be thrilled as he gears up for a week of high-stakes diplomacy between the Kremlin and Western powers. A series of conferences and summits is planned in Geneva, Brussels, Vienna and Brest, France that all aim to serve the same purpose: keeping the Russian president in a good mood and averting a feared Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The diplomatic flurry kicked off in December with two telephone conversations between the American and Russian presidents.

That was followed by a video conference of NATO foreign ministers on Friday, in which the “Western” position on Russia was hammered out.

United States President Joe Biden has promised to closely consult with the Europeans on this issue, and he has stuck to his word. On Monday, top US representatives are set to hold “strategic talks” with Russians delegates in Geneva.

NATO mulls way forward

On Wednesday, there will be a meeting in Brussels of the NATO-Russia Council, a consultation forum that hasn’t met in several years. At the same time, NATO’s military chiefs of staff will come together to consider troop reinforcements on the Black Sea or NATO’s eastern border.

On Thursday, talks will continue in the broader format of the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which includes the US as well as Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

The European Union, too, is determined not to be left out. EU defense and foreign ministers will meet in the French town of Brest on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. As with all the other planned conferences, the main topic on the agenda will be Russian demands for security guarantees and possible reactions to an escalation by Putin in Ukraine.

EU sidelined on European security

The main takeaway is that the Russian president has managed to get the “West” scrambling, laying bare differing viewpoints in the opposing camp. When it comes to the relationship with Russia, there are clear differences within NATO and the EU, depending on the interests of the member states.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has even complained that the bloc has been left out — he said he wasn’t even asked — when it came to security in Europe and in Ukraine.

To date, the Europeans have not managed to agree on exactly which tough sanctions they want to use to threaten Russia. The only thing the EU has decided is that Moscow should have a high price to pay if it escalates its aggression against Ukraine.

Compromise for the Kremlin

The EU is understandably reluctant to target the sector that would really hurt Russia, namely energy supplies. Without oil and gas from Russia, several countries in Europe, including Germany, would be in serious trouble.

Putin will probably not have to reckon with any serious resolutions being taken during this intense week of diplomacy. It’s likely that we’ll simply see the same warnings that have been issued since 2014, when Russia first deployed its troops on Ukraine’s eastern border.

Neither the US nor other NATO states will be deploying their own military to assist Ukraine. And it remains out of the question that NATO will respond favorably to Moscow’s demand that NATO categorically deny membership to Ukraine and Georgia.

Western powers will not accept Russian blackmail, and Putin knows that very well. However, Biden has already assured the Kremlin that the accession of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO is not on the agenda for the foreseeable future. After all, this state of limbo has existed since the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest.

Keeping the dialogue going
euvering, relying on diplomacy in a bid not to provoke military action by Russia. And Putin will keep the West on its toes with his deliberate provocations.

Putin will keep the conflicts in and around Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and Armenia simmering in order to prevent these countries from moving closer to the West. For him, the West, which couldn’t even organize its own withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, seems militarily indecisive in the extreme.

For now, Putin won’t expand the war against Ukraine, which he started back in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. After all, the unpredictable Russian president has basically achieved what he wants.

The US, NATO and the EU will want to keep talking, counting on the fact that Putin cannot afford a full-blown war on the domestic front and at a time when he is busy consolidating his influence in Kazakhstan.

This upcoming week of intense diplomacy is unlikely to be the last. And that is hugely valuable in itself: People who talk to each other usually don’t shoot at each other.

This opinion piece was originally written in German.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-putin-gets-his-way-as-west-scrambles/a-60368080

The post Opinion: Putin gets his way as West scrambles first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday warned NATO against crossing a “red line” in Ukraine, underscoring that Moscow would have no choice but to respond while boasting about Russia’s hypersonic missile development.

Putin said that the deployment of NATO troops or advanced missile systems on Ukrainian soil that could strike Moscow within minutes would be a step too far for Russia. NATO has not taken any steps along these lines.

“If some kind of strike systems appear on the territory of Ukraine, the flight time to Moscow will be seven to 10 minutes, and five minutes in the case of a hypersonic weapon being deployed. Just imagine,” Putin said.

“What are we to do in such a scenario? We will have to then create something similar in relation to those who threaten us in that way. And we can do that now,” Putin added, referencing Russia’s recent tests of a hypersonic missile.

Putin has said the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile, which is poised to enter service with the Russian Navy in 2022, is capable of flying nine times the speed of sound and has a range of roughly 620 miles, according to the Associated Press. On Tuesday, Putin emphasized that the missile could reach some targets within “just five minutes.”

Hypersonic missiles are designed to be virtually unstoppable and are capable of flying at least five times the speed of sound. The US, Russia, and China are locked in a global arms race to develop hypersonic weapons.

A top Space Force official earlier this month said that the US is “not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs.”

Putin’s warning to NATO on Tuesday came amid fears that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine.

For the second time this year, tens of thousands of Russian troops have amassed along Ukraine’s border.

The Kremlin denies any plans to invade, while blaming NATO for the tensions. Ukraine has said that more than 90,000 Russian troops have gathered on its border, and Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky last week warned that he’d uncovered a coup plot involving Russians. It’s unclear what Putin will do next, but he has the region on edge.

Ivo Daalder, the US ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013, recently told Insider, “There is a major risk of Russian military activity in Ukraine in the next few months. All the signs point to a major build up of military capability.”

The Russian president views the increased influence of the US and NATO in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic and Russia’s nextdoor neighbor, as a major security threat. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but maintains a robust partnership with the alliance.

Ukraine lies at the center of the contentious dynamic between Moscow and the West. In 2014, Russian forces entered Crimea and it was unilaterally annexed by Putin, prompting outcry around the world. And since that year, Kremlin-backed rebels have been fighting a war against Ukrainian troops in the eastern Donbass region. The conflict has claimed over 13,000 lives.

The US has provided over $2.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since 2014, and there’s bipartisan support in Congress for increasing that aid.

Putin on Tuesday suggested that Russia and the West need to reach new security agreements in order to avoid further conflict, the Associated Press reported.

“The matter is not whether to send troops or not, go to war or not, but to establish a more fair and stable development and taking into account security interests of all international players,” Putin said. “If we sincerely strive for that, no one will fear any threats.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday warned Russia that “renewed aggression” to Ukraine “can trigger serious consequences.”

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-boasts-of-russias-hypersonic-missiles-in-warning-to-nato-over-ukraine-2021-11

The post Putin warns NATO of Russia’s unstoppable missiles if his ‘red line’ in Ukraine is crossed first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.