The United States and NATO are negotiating with Moscow this week.
The defense and foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) will meet between tomorrow Wednesday and Friday in Brest (France), in an informal meeting that coincides with the negotiations, this week, between Russia, the United States and NATO on security in Europe and tension with Ukraine.
The Defense Ministers will start the meeting tomorrow with a dinner that will also be attended by the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, and on Thursday the heads of European diplomacy will join, who will continue on Friday with a meeting exclusively between the ministers of Exteriors.
“It will be an opportunity to make an analysis of the situation of the Ukrainian folder,” French diplomatic sources explained today.
The EU wants its interests to be defended and it is taken into account in the meetings that Moscow intends to hold exclusively with the United States and NATO on a new security framework in Europe and how to reduce tension with Kiev.
“We do not have the feeling that the discussion will be Russian-American,” pointed out, however, the same diplomatic sources, in relation to the meeting that Washington and Moscow held yesterday in Geneva and in which it was clear that their starting positions are still very far away.
In fact, the US Undersecretary of State, Wendy Sherman, who yesterday headed the North American delegation in Switzerland, met today with the EU ambassadors to explain the outcome of the meeting with Moscow.
A meeting after which Sherman hinted that of the Russian requests, the one that could obtain the most progress is the one relating to a reduction in maneuvers in “border” areas between NATO and Russia, although he asked that the withdrawal be reciprocal.
Regarding the Kremlin’s request to reduce nuclear and non-nuclear weapons on European soil, Sherman stated that “deeper debates on the issue” are needed and stressed that decisions in this regard “cannot be concluded in a matter of days, not even weeks “.
“There is a format that is Russian American and it is good. For a long time we have encouraged the resumption of discussions on bilateral issues such as nuclear proliferation. But we coordinate with Americans,” said the aforementioned sources, who pointed out that there are also “other formats” in dialogue with Russia.
It is in this context that France and Germany try to revive the Normandy format, formed by these two countries, Russia and Ukraine, after Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula.
Beyond the tension with Russia, the ministers will also address other issues such as the situation in Mali, where the military junta that leads the country refused to organize elections next February, a decision that has led to new sanctions by the Economic Community of West African States ( ECOWAS).
The EU’s concern over the conflict in Mali has grown in recent months, fearing that a situation such as that in Afghanistan could be repeated, in which the withdrawal of the United States after the arrival of the Taliban revealed the lack of military capacity of the Europeans. (I)
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