Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday promised a “military and technical” response if his Western rivals did not end their policies deemed threatening, amid growing tensions over Ukraine.
“In case of maintaining the very clearly aggressive line of our Western colleagues, we will take adequate military and technical measures of retaliation”, he declared in front of the fine flower of the army and the Ministry of Defense. “We have every right to do so. “
According to the Kremlin, the United States and NATO are strengthening their presence at Russia’s borders by arming Ukraine, supporting it politically, maneuvering in the country and deploying forces in the Black Sea. “We are on our doorstep, we cannot back down,” said Mr. Poutin.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu added, accusing Washington of preparing “provocations” in Ukraine, in particular of organizing the sending of “an undetermined chemical component” to the front of the conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro separatists. -Russians.
We’re on our doorstep, we can’t back down
According to him, 120 members of private military companies are also in the region to train “Ukrainian special forces and radical groups in combat actions”.
The Westerners on the contrary accuse Moscow of aggressive inclinations, the Russian army having massed tens of thousands of soldiers on the border with Ukraine, of which Russia has already annexed part of the territory.
The Nordic countries, neighbors of Russia, have in turn expressed in a joint document their “great concern” with regard to Russian military activity at the gates of Ukraine.
Meeting in January?
As he had done in an interview with his American counterpart, Joe Biden, the Russian leader demanded that Washington give Russia guarantees by signing treaties prohibiting any NATO enlargement.
Vladimir Poutine has assured that he does not want an “armed conflict, a bloodshed” and prefers a “politico-diplomatic solution”.
Russia presented two treaties last week, one for the United States and the other for NATO, which summarize its demands for de-escalation.
The texts prohibit the enlargement of NATO, to Ukraine in particular, and limit Western military cooperation in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, without imposing similar measures on Russia.
Later the same day, Mr. Putin called for “serious discussions” with NATO on the proposals, in his first telephone interview with the new German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz. The latter expressed “his concern” to him at the situation in Ukraine and stressed “the urgent need for de-escalation”, according to a statement from Berlin.
For her part, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Karen Donfried, said on Tuesday she expected the dialogue on Ukraine and security in Europe to begin “in January”, while by warning Moscow that some of its demands were “unacceptable”.
Ukrainian frustration
At the same time, Americans and Europeans are threatening Moscow with unparalleled economic sanctions in the event of an offensive in Ukraine. However, they do not plan to send troops to the rescue.
These threats of sanctions were therefore greeted in Moscow with a shrug of the shoulders, especially since no retaliatory measure has ever led the Kremlin to back down.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took offense to him on Tuesday at the West’s reluctance to set a timetable for his country’s accession to NATO and the European Union. “We cannot accept the idea […] of a [adhésion à] the EU in 30 years, and [à] NATO, in about fifty years, ”he said. Ukraine sees these alliances as essential to its survival in the face of Russian ambitions.
In response to a pro-Western revolution, Moscow has already annexed Crimea in 2014, while being widely regarded, despite its denials, as the godfather of pro-Russian separatists at war with Kiev for almost eight years.
The Kremlin holds the West responsible for the breach of confidence, NATO having expanded to the East from the 1990s, violating, according to Moscow, promises made after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Russia marks in December the thirty years of the end of the USSR, an episode that the Russian president describes as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.e century ”.