Talks between the US and Russia on the Ukraine crisis leave low expectations

The United States and Russia began tough negotiations in Geneva on Monday that Washington hopes will help avert the danger of a new Russian invasion of Ukraine without giving in to the Kremlin’s mounting demands for security, with publicly pessimistic diplomats.

The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said over the weekend that it was entirely possible that diplomacy would end after a single meeting, and even the US secretary of state, Antony Blink, downplayed the expectations of the high-level talks.

“I don’t think we’ll see any progress in the next week”, He opined flash in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

The talks between Ryabkov and the US undersecretary of state, Wendy Sherman, began at the US diplomatic mission in Geneva, at a time when US-Russian relations are at their most tense since the Cold War ended three decades ago.

Sherman stated that “The United States will listen to Russia’s concerns and share ours”In a previous tweet from Geneva, adding that discussions on European security would not take place without the presence of other allies. The discussions will move to Brussels and Vienna later this week.

Nearly 100,000 Russian soldiers are near the border with Ukraine, in preparation for what Washington and Kiev say could be a possible invasion, eight years after Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

Russia It denies the invasion plans and said it is responding to what it calls aggressive and provocative behavior by the NATO-Ukraine military alliance, which has leaned towards the West and aspires to join NATO.

Last month, Russia filed broad demands that included a ban on further NATO expansion and an end to the alliance’s activity in the Central and Eastern European countries that joined it after 1997.

United States and the OTAN they claim that much of the Russian proposals are not viable.

Ryabkov told the RIA news agency that Russia would not accept the United States’ attempts to limit the agenda to the discussion of military exercises and the deployment of missiles, the issues identified by the Joe Biden government as areas that it is willing to address. .

“We need legal guarantees of the non-expansion of NATO and the elimination of everything that the alliance has created since 1997″ Ryabkov said.

Russia has tried to show flexibility for the past 30 years and it is time for the other side to be flexible, he said. “If they are unable to do so, they will face a deterioration in their own security. “

The general secretary of the OTAN, Jens Stoltenberg, who will meet with the Russian team on Wednesday in Brussels, said Russia and the West may not resolve all the issues this week, but that they may find a way to avoid conflict.

“What we hope is that we can agree on a way forward, that we can agree on a series of meetings, that we can agree on a process”Stoltenberg noted.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna, who appeared alongside him, stated that Russia’s demands “they cannot be considered a negotiating position ”.

He stated that the “aggressor is not in a position to put conditions“As long as the Russian tanks remain near the Ukrainian border.