Ukraine: Americans and Russians start “complicated” talks

Published on : 01/10/2022 – 00:58

“Complicated” discussions began on the evening of Sunday January 9 in Geneva, in an attempt to defuse the explosive crisis that is playing out around Ukraine.

“The discussion was complicated, it could not be simple,” said Russian Deputy Minister Sergei Riabkov, quoted by Interfax news agency, after a two-hour working dinner with US Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

Sergei Riabkov called the discussion “serious”. A day of negotiations should follow Monday. “I think that tomorrow we will not waste our time,” added the Russian.

The United States and Russia have taken a firm position ahead of these negotiations. Washington has warned of a risk of “confrontation” and Moscow has ruled out any concessions.

During the working dinner, Wendy Sherman “underscored the United States’ support for international principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the freedom of sovereign countries to choose their own alliances,” according to a State Department statement. American.

A few hours before this dinner, Sergei Riabkov said he was “disappointed with the signals coming in recent days from Washington, but also from Brussels”, where the European Union (EU) and NATO are based, according to Russian agencies.

A responsibility returned

This meeting launches an intense diplomatic week. In addition to the American-Russian discussions in Switzerland on Monday, a NATO-Russia meeting is scheduled for Wednesday in Brussels, then a meeting on Thursday in Vienna of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), to include the Europeans, who fear to be marginalized.

“There is a way of dialogue and diplomacy to try to resolve some of these differences,” Antony Blinken had estimated Sunday on the American channel CNN. “The other path is one of confrontation and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression on Ukraine. We are about to see which path President (Russian Vladimir) Putin is prepared to take.”

The West and Kiev accuse the Russians of having massed nearly 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border for a potential invasion, and have threatened Vladimir Putin with “massive” and unprecedented sanctions if he attacks Ukraine again . These sanctions could go as far as cutting Russia off from the cogs of global finance or preventing the entry into service of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline dear to the Kremlin.

President Putin, who has met twice with his American counterpart Joe Biden since the start of this new crisis, warned that further sanctions would be a “colossal mistake” and threatened a “military and technical” response in case of “maintaining the very clearly aggressive line” of its rivals.

The Kremlin says it is the West that provokes Russia by stationing the military at its gates and arming Ukrainian soldiers fighting pro-Russian separatists in Donbass in eastern Ukraine. He therefore calls for a major treaty excluding Ukraine’s entry into NATO and the withdrawal of American soldiers from the most eastern countries of the Atlantic Alliance.

>> To read: Why Russia considers itself threatened by NATO

But the Americans say they do not want to reduce their troops in Poland or the Baltic countries, and threaten to reinforce them if the Russians go on the offensive.

With AFP