If US Secretary of State Tony Blinken hopes that the meeting with his Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov this Thursday will ease the situation in bilateral relations or the situation in Eastern Europe, he will be disappointed. On the day before the deliberations on the sidelines of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Stockholm, the State Department in Moscow announced that it would expel all US diplomats from the country who had been there for more than three years – a reprisal that is unfortunately inevitable, said spokeswoman Maria Sakharova . Washington also asked Russian diplomats to leave the United States.
No less harsh tones come from the Kremlin. In a speech to ambassadors on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin demanded that NATO must give Russia legally binding guarantees that it would not expand the alliance further east and not station any weapons systems near the Russian border. This is primarily aimed at Ukraine, whose prospect of accession to the Western Defense Alliance Blinken and the other foreign ministers of the member states had just reiterated at their meeting in Riga, albeit without linking it to a specific date.
Putin also used the opportunity to hold NATO jointly responsible for the tensions with Ukraine. The threat to the western borders is really growing, he said. “For us this is more than serious.” And his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that Russia was not in a position to de-escalate the region. Ukraine had more than 120,000 soldiers in Donbass. One is “seriously concerned” about it. This raises concerns that the leadership in Kiev could try to resolve the conflict with the separatists militarily. “This is a very dangerous adventure.”
This is obviously the reaction to the NATO meeting in Riga, at which the alliance activated an internal mechanism for crisis coordination and discussed sanctions and other measures to deter Russia from entering again. The Alliance had expressed deep concern that Russia had concentrated hundreds of tanks and 90,000 soldiers on the border with Ukraine.
In fact, the ceasefire violations are increasing – albeit mainly on the part of the separatists, who are controlled by the Russian military. The Ukrainian army recently came under artillery fire from a Turkish-type armed drone Bayraktar responded, which destroyed a howitzer battery. This apparently sparked fears in Moscow that the military stalemate could change in favor of Kiev. In the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the Turkish drones had proven to be extremely effective weapons systems against Soviet-made military equipment, as supplied by Moscow to the separatists.
Russia nevertheless rejects direct talks with Kiev, as offered by Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky. The Presidential Office in Moscow said the Ukrainian leadership should speak to the pro-Russian separatists in Donbass. Russia denies having decisive influence over these groups, which have military control over parts of the Ukrainian areas of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Germany and France’s efforts on the Minsk Agreement – dismissed
Putin also rejects all diplomatic efforts by Germany and France to resume talks on the implementation of the Minsk Agreement, which provides for a ceasefire and a peace plan for the area. Russia accuses Ukraine of failing to implement its part of the agreement, but is not making any effort to honor its commitments. It is considered possible that Putin wants to force an implementation of the agreement or a new peace plan according to his terms with the deployment. However, the USA and other NATO partners also believe that direct military intervention by Russia in the conflict with regular large organizations, including an invasion of Ukraine, is possible.
They should see their concerns confirmed with regard to the cooperation between the Belarusian regime of dictator Alexander Lukashenko and the Kremlin. Lukashenko, who is politically dependent on Putin, after long hesitation recognized the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014. It is de facto Russian territory and the annexation was legally confirmed by a referendum in 2014, he said. However, this is not recognized internationally.