BRUSSELS — NATO and Russian officials are meeting Wednesday amid mounting pressure from Moscow to agree to its sweeping demands or face a crisis in Ukraine that Russia warns would echo for generations.
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But so far, there is little optimism on either side that the talks will resolve an impasse over Russia’s main demand that Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, as well as other former Soviet states, be barred from ever joining the Western military alliance, with officials and analysts saying the best-case scenario would be for all sides to just keep talking.
The talks are part of meetings between Western and Russian officials this week aimed at cooling tensions over Russia’s massing of troops near Ukraine, which has prompted fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to launch a new attack.
Russia threatens to scuttle talks with U.S. if there is no swift acceptance of its security demands
The United States — a NATO member — met with Russian officials independently Monday, and U.S. officials said they rebuffed Moscow’s demands. Analysts expect a similar outcome after Wednesday’s discussions.
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“I don’t think we can expect that these meetings will solve all issues,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters this week. “What we are hoping for is that we can agree on the way forward, that we can agree on a series of meetings, that we can agree on the process.”
Officials report that Russia has deployed about 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian border and continues to increase its military presence — even while the United States, NATO and European Union officials promise severe consequences if Russia invades Ukraine.
Russia denies it plans to attack, but Putin has accused NATO of threatening Russian security and warned of a “military-technical” response to any “unfriendly steps.”
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said Tuesday that, in conversations with member states, “it has become crystal clear that not a single ally inside the NATO alliance is willing to budge or negotiate anything as it relates to NATO’s ‘open door’ policy,” which allows any country to join the organization. Speaking in a call with reporters Tuesday, Smith said she “cannot imagine any scenario where that is up for discussion.”
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Smith said a 2008 Bucharest summit concluded that admitting Ukraine and Georgia to NATO was a question of “not whether but when.” She called Russia’s demands to rule out the alliance’s expansion to those nations and others a “nonstarter.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Russia sees NATO’s open door policy as a threat and needs legally binding security guarantees. He said Russia is “open to dialogue,” despite the tough situation, but that “threats” by U.S. officials going into the talks were unhelpful.
Peskov added that Russia would “wait for the completion of these negotiations and the next round at the OSCE site” before deciding on further action.
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“We would not like to, like American officials, pour out threats, ultimatums, predict a high price to be paid. We would not want to be like this,” Peskov said.
More than 10,000 Russian troops in southern Russia began military exercises Wednesday. Peskov denied any relationship between the exercises and the NATO-Russia Council talks.
Talks on the crisis Monday between U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov made no progress. Sherman told journalists she had rejected Russia’s demand that NATO block entry by Ukraine.
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Stoltenberg has said that allowing new countries to join NATO is a key principle of the alliance. He said he is confident that member countries will not give in to demands that would restrict the alliance’s growth or prevent it from protecting its allies in Eastern Europe. Russia has also demanded that NATO agree not to carry out any military activity in Central Asia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and non-NATO countries in Eastern Europe — a demand that NATO has similarly said it would not accept.
Russia-U.S. talks hit impasse over NATO expansion as Moscow denies plans to invade Ukraine
While imminent agreements are unlikely, having conversations with Russia is better than not having them and could prevent a war, according to Sam A. Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London. Greene said no one can predict exactly what Putin’s plans or intentions are and that discussions will not be “a quick or easy process.”
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“Strategic discussions are better than war and can achieve better outcomes for everyone than a war. It’s a massive diplomatic undertaking,” Greene said. “Is it possible that those positions will change over time? Yeah, that’s why we talk.”
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The Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said the United States should drop its “aggressive rhetoric of foreign expansion” and think instead about how future generations can live together.
He said at Wednesday’s NATO-Russia Council meeting that Moscow wants “a substantive discussion of the Russian documents that must be adopted as soon as possible in order to stabilize the situation in Europe.”
Russian officials have steadily scaled up pressure over several months, amplifying the sense of crisis through military movements, accusations of Western aggression, claims that Kyiv or Washington were planning “provocations” against Russia, and warnings that Moscow will not wait long for its demands to be met.
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Russia’s grievances hark back to 1997, when NATO began a series of expansions by accepting former Warsaw Pact and former Soviet nations.
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Putin has cited the deployment of NATO defensive missiles in Romania and Poland as threatening Russia. Last month, Russia released a list of demands for written security guarantees from NATO, including a call for the removal of all NATO military infrastructure installed in Eastern European countries after 1997, effectively attempting to rework the consequences of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, which left Russia weakened for years.
Dixon reported from Belgrade, Serbia. Paul Sonne in Washington contributed to this report.
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Ahead of talks, U.S. again warns Putin of ‘massive consequences’ if Russia invades Ukraine