A high-profile meeting of NATO allies and Russia broke without any certainty over whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will order a new invasion of Ukraine.
“There was no commitment to de-escalation, no,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told reporters in Brussels. “There was no commitment to de-escalate, nor was there a statement that there would not be.”
The meeting took place in a tense context, as Russia’s mobilization of troops near the border of Ukraine has raised the specter of a major conflict. Putin has demanded that Western powers vow to exclude from NATO Ukraine and other countries that gained independence from the Soviet Union and curtail the military support offered to NATO allies in Eastern Europe.
“The continuation of NATO’s open-door policy and the further advancement of NATO towards our borders is precisely what, from our point of view, threatens us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday, per state media. “This is exactly what we are asking not to continue through legally binding guarantees.”
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Those requirements amount to an unconscionable demand, according to NATO. “We will not compromise on the right for all countries to choose their own path, including what kind of security arrangements they want to be part of,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters. “And we will not compromise on the right for allies to protect and defend each other.”
Russian officials underscored the stakes of the meeting by kicking off live-fire military exercises near Ukraine but declined to make the threat explicit.
“Unlike American officials, we would rather not be spouting threats, ultimatums, and predicting a high price, which someone might pay,” Peskov said. “In terms of the negotiations, we are holding them in a cultured manner, we are open to dialogue, and our diplomats maintained diplomatic traditions despite the rough situation.”
Stoltenberg countered that Russian officials are not trying to address a perceived threat to their security, but rather to enhance their ability to threaten or intimidate their neighbors.
“This whole idea that in a way, ‘You are close to me, so you can’t do what you want,’ is to reintroduce the thinking of spheres of influence,” Stoltenberg said. “Those of us who are coming from small countries, neighboring Russia, should understand that that’s a very dangerous path.”
NATO allies have proposed dialogue about other outstanding security matters, such as the placement of missiles in Europe. “Russia was not in a position to agree on that proposal,” Stoltenberg said. “They didn’t reject it, either, but the Russian representatives made it very clear that they needed some time to come back to NATO with an answer.”
Sherman, who led the U.S. delegation to meet Russian officials this week in Geneva and then in Brussels, said that a refusal to begin those talks would amount to a strong clue that Russia seeks more war in Ukraine.
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“There is plenty to work on where we have places where we can enhance mutual security,” she said. “There is progress that can be made. And everyone, Russia most of all, will have to decide whether they really are about security, in which case they should engage, or whether this was all a pretext. And they may not even know yet.”
