Four hours of discussion and a dead end. On Wednesday, the NATO Secretary General concluded that the differences in views between the Alliance and Russia on Ukraine will “be difficult to reconcile”.
In the process, he also called on Moscow to de-escalate its border with Ukraine where the deployment of 100,000 Russian soldiers in recent weeks still suggests the threat of an invasion of this former Soviet republic by Moscow. .
“The risk of a new armed conflict is very real,” Jens Stoltenberg summed up after a meeting held at Alliance headquarters in Brussels with Alexander Grouchko, Russian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs. It is up to Russia to come out of the crisis. It must engage in de-escalation ”.
And to add: “We proposed to have a set of meetings to deal with a set of issues, but Russia was not able to agree to this proposal, although it did not reject it. “.
This meeting was the second stage of the diplomatic journey of the Kremlin which began Monday in Geneva with the meeting between Russia and the United States in an attempt to calm tensions between Moscow and Kiev. The border crisis is exploited by Vladimir Putin in order to put pressure on NATO, Europe and its allies in order to prevent an extension of the Military Alliance in this former Soviet republic.
The Russian president also believes that any advance by NATO in this corner of Europe would betray a promise made by the United States to Russia in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall. According to him, by allowing the reunification of Germany, Moscow would have obtained the assurance that NATO does not extend to the countries of the East.
The deaf dialogue continued on Wednesday as Russia reiterated its demand for Ukraine to stop NATO’s enlargement process to the east. The allies have once again rejected him, said Stoltenberg.
“We must prepare for Russia to opt for confrontation,” he said at a press conference. There has been a history. It would be a serious strategic error which would have serious consequences ”.
Russia seeks “to reconstitute the Soviet geopolitical glacis in Europe and to attempt a decoupling between the United States and Europe. These objectives are clearly unacceptable, ”the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell summed up on his blog on Wednesday.
The countries of the European Union, of which 21 are members of NATO, must have, according to him, “clear positions” for the discussions on the security architecture of Europe and “to formulate [une] responnse [commune] in case Russia carries out its threats against Ukraine, ”he added.
After Geneva and Brussels, the diplomatic sequence must continue Thursday in Vienna with a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the platform for East-West dialogue resulting from the Cold War.
With Agence France-Presse