The current relations between the two countries are deplorable, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov on Monday. The video conference of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden on Tuesday will deal with the Ukraine conflict, NATO and the security guarantees for Russia demanded by Putin, said Peskov.
Russia feels threatened by NATO
According to the spokesman for the Interfax agency on Monday, it is about securities for Russia and for the NATO states. Putin recently called on NATO to end its eastward expansion and demanded written guarantees for this. In return, Russia is ready to give the Western military alliance security.
The nuclear power sees itself threatened by an advance of NATO and wants to prevent the admission of the neighboring ex-Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance. “The security guarantees cannot be unilateral, that is obvious,” said Peskow. According to the Kremlin, the “video meeting” begins around 4 p.m. CET and should last into the evening. As heads of state, the two first met in person in Geneva in June.
Ukraine conflict as main topic
One of the main topics of the talks will be the massive new tensions in the Ukraine conflict. The US accuses Russia of deploying troops not far from the border with Ukraine. According to this, a Russian invasion of Ukraine is feared in the West. The leadership in Moscow rejects this and stresses that Russia poses no threat. At the same time, the country repeatedly points out that it can deploy troops wherever it wants on its own territory.
What is certain, however, is that Russia would react with military force in the event of an offensive by the Ukrainian armed forces in the areas controlled by Moscow-loyal separatists in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Russia has hundreds of thousands of passports distributed in the region. Moscow’s military doctrine allows interventions to protect Russian citizens in other countries.
Sharp reactions in the event of an invasion
Biden apparently wants to threaten Putin with serious economic consequences in the event of an attack on Ukraine. A government official said at a briefing to journalists ahead of the two presidents’ scheduled video call in Washington on Tuesday that the US, together with its European allies, had worked out a sharp response in the event of an invasion.
Putin and Biden want to speak once more about the negotiations that have been going on for months on a new nuclear disarmament initiative by the two largest nuclear powers. After numerous hacker attacks, talks are also planned about the cybersecurity of both countries as well as about the Iranian nuclear program and other international conflicts
Source: Nachrichten
