Americans ready to discuss to avoid a new cold war with Russia. Moscow has proposed two treaties, one to the United States, the other to the NATO countries, to ban any enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance, in particular to Ukraine, and the end of all Western military activity nearby. Russian borders. A sine qua non condition for resolving the current crisis around Ukraine.
“There must be no advance of NATO towards the East, the ball is in their court, they must answer us”, affirmed Vladimir Poutine this Thursday at a press conference. “For the time being we are seeing a positive reaction, our American partners tell us that they are ready to start this discussion, these negotiations, from the start of the year in Geneva,” added the head of the Kremlin.
The West threatened with military measures
Vladimir Poutine has reiterated that any future enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance was “unacceptable” for Russia, which will not tolerate a Western armaments system “on (its) doorstep”. The remark comes two days after he threatened the West with “military and technical measures” if his demands were not accepted.
However, these demands, which have serious consequences for the European security architecture, have been deemed “unacceptable” by many Western voices. The Russian president is suspected of preparing an invasion of Ukraine, a former Soviet republic now pro-Western, part of whose territory, Crimea, has already been annexed by Russia in 2014. More than 100,000 Russian soldiers are said to be deployed in the border.
Navalny accused of being a criminal
Vladimir Putin stressed on Thursday that the anti-Russian policies of Ukraine and its Western allies, especially in the context of the war against pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine, posed a threat to Moscow. “We have to think about our safety,” he said. “We can’t live by looking over our shoulders and thinking, what’s going to happen? When are they going to knock? He again accused the West of having “brazenly deceived” Russia in the 1990s by violating an alleged promise not to expand NATO.
Asked about the repression of the Russian opposition, which increased considerably in 2021, Vladimir Poutin judged that it was not a question of muzzling detractors but of curbing operations of foreign influence. “I remind you of what our adversaries have been saying for centuries: Russia cannot be defeated, it can only be destroyed from within,” he said. According to him, this is what brought about the fall of the USSR 30 years ago. He also qualified the opponent Alexeï Navalny as a criminal once again, referring to his conviction in a fraud case, deemed to have been fabricated by the opposition. “Convicts, there have always been. We must not commit crimes, ”he said.