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No rapprochement between USA and Russia
In the talks between the USA and Russia on the security situation in Eastern Europe, no rapprochement has emerged. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said after the meeting in Geneva on Monday that the two countries had opposing views on what should be done. For her part, his US colleague Wendy Sherman said that the American side had stood firm in the face of Russian demands, for example for a binding rejection of Ukraine’s NATO membership. The background to the tensions is the deployment of almost 100,000 Russian soldiers on the Ukrainian border. Russia denies invasion plans, but annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014. The US is calling for Russian troops to be withdrawn from the border. Russia, on the other hand, is demanding a guarantee from NATO not to accept Ukraine and not to expand further east.
There is tension between the two countries. The background is a possible accession of Ukraine to NATO.