Putin is betting on all or nothing in his security order to the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin maintains his order on security matters to the United States and NATO after speaking with the head of the White House, Joe Biden, who warned that new sanctions for an escalation in Ukraine would entail the “ total ”breakdown of relationships.

“If within a reasonable period of time we do not receive a constructive response and the West continues its aggressive policy, then Russia will be forced to adopt all necessary measures to ensure strategic balance and eliminate unacceptable threats to its security,” said Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, to the RIA Nóvosti agency

Putin was the one who decided to phone Biden last night before the New Year’s Eve parties in Russia, which start this Friday and will last until January 9, to assure him that Moscow is serious when it says that it wants “immediate” guarantees and that Ukraine is not touched.

The cards on the table

The only certainty at the moment is that the United States picked up the gauntlet and, although it admits that some of the Russian demands such as that of withdrawing nuclear weapons from Europe are unfeasible, it agreed to sit down to negotiate on January 10 in Geneva.

Two days later, it will be the turn of NATO, which Putin demands to renounce the entry of the former Soviet republics, and on January 13 the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will enter the scene.

However, although European countries have a lot to say about the security of their continent, Russia wants to receive guarantees from the United States first.

It is “extremely important” the participation in the negotiations “of high military commanders of the United States and the countries of the Alliance”, which could lead to agreements on conventional arms control, Lavrov insisted.

“We will not allow our initiatives to be entangled in endless discussions,” he stressed.

He ruled out that future agreements bear similarities to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (FACE), which Lavrov considered “anachronistic” and which was denounced by Moscow in 2015.

“Our proposals are aimed at the creation and formulation of a new system of agreements based on the principles of indivisible security and the renunciation of the attempts to achieve military hegemony approved unanimously by the leaders of all Euro-Atlantic countries in the 1990s” 20th century, he explained.

He stressed that Moscow will not settle for anything other than legal and binding guarantees in writing since, he specified, “Western colleagues systematically fail to fulfill their political commitments, let alone the verbal promises made to the Soviet and Russian leaders.”

Ukraine, an existential threat

Although the security treaty and agreement proposals to the United States and NATO for peaceful coexistence go further, the attention of both parties is on the militarization of the border with Ukraine.

“For Russia, the colonization of Ukraine by NATO countries is an existential threat,” Anatoli Antonov, Russian ambassador to the United States and former deputy foreign and defense minister, said in an article in “Foreign Policy” magazine.

Antonov assured that the situation created between Russia and NATO is “very dangerous” and “urgent measures” are required to restore stability in terms of security on the European continent, which would include the United States joining the Russian moratorium on the deployment of medium and short range missiles.

“No one should doubt our steadfastness in defending our security. If our partners continue to breed a strategic-military reality, then we will have to create a similar vulnerability for them. Everything has a limit ”, he affirmed.

He appealed to Western “political will”, since he considered that the Russian initiative does not “undermine” the security of the United States and the Alliance, but rather “creates the conditions to reduce tension in Europe, increase confidence and activate cooperation with in order to combat global challenges ”, from the pandemic to climate change and economic recovery.

“We have reached a time where there is nowhere to go back. We want to be sure of tomorrow ”, he stressed and stressed that, according to the latest data, the military budget of the NATO countries is more than 25 times greater than that of Russia.

Donbas, a war without closing

Lavrov also accused NATO of turning the neighboring country into “a military platform against Russia” and denounced that next year the Allied military presence in Ukraine will increase in the framework of joint maneuvers that have a clearly “anti-Russian” aspect.

He denounced that the war in Ukraine “is far from over” due to Kiev’s reluctance to settle the conflict and accused the West of supporting Ukraine’s “militaristic aspirations” with weapons and instructors, which is taken as “carte blanche” for launch military adventures.

Regarding a possible resumption of hostilities on a large scale in the Donbas, he recalled that in this region “live hundreds of thousands of citizens of our country”, so “Russia will take all necessary measures for their protection.”