“The main objective of the United States is to contain Russia, and Ukraine is their instrument to drag us into an armed conflict, and hit us with the harshest sanctions,” he said. “I hope that in the end we will find a solution, even if it is not easy,” he added, receiving Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an ally even though his country is a member of the European Union and NATO.
For Orban, the differences between the two parties were “surmountable”.
The Russian president did not mention the tens of thousands of soldiers deployed on the border with Ukraine for weeks, and that leads the Western world to think that he is preparing a new attack on his neighbor after the one in 2014.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, urged his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, to “an immediate de-escalation and the withdrawal of troops and equipment from the borders of Ukraine”, warning of “swift and severe” sanctions in the event of an offensive .
Russia denies any warlike intention and demands guarantees for its security, in particular that Ukraine will never be a member of NATO and that the Atlantic Alliance will withdraw its forces to their 1997 positions, that is, before its successive enlargements in Eastern Europe.
The United States government rejected these demands and left the door open to discuss other issues, such as the deployment of missiles or reciprocal limits on military maneuvers. Russia prepares a response to this position.
“We are analyzing the written responses received from the United States and NATO but it is clear that Russia’s principled concerns have been ignored,” Putin said.
Putin laid out the worst possible scenario, saying that if Ukraine became a NATO member, it would try to forcibly retake Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, triggering a conflict between Moscow and the Atlantic Alliance. “Imagine Ukraine, a NATO member, launches a military operation in Crimea, a sovereign territory of Russia,” he said, “what about us? Would we go to war with NATO?” he added.
Echoing his foreign minister, he contested the principle that “nobody should strengthen their security at the expense of others”, while the West insists on Ukraine’s right to choose its alliances. Despite the deep differences, Blinken said he wanted to “continue a substantive exchange with Russia on mutual security concerns.”
“Blinken agreed that there are reasons to continue the dialogue” on the issue of Russia’s security,” Lavrov said. “We’ll see how it goes,” he added.
In another sign of Western support for Ukraine, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Kiev on Tuesday, as was his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki.
“It is vital that Russia step back and choose the path of diplomacy,” Johnson said, warning that there is a “clear” and “imminent” danger of Russian military intervention in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky welcomed the growing Western diplomatic and military support for Moscow, “the most important” since Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
To deter Moscow from any aggression, the West has also accelerated its preparations to impose punitive economic measures. “We are willing to talk, of course, but the sanctions are ready,” Johnson said.
The United States and the United Kingdom, one of the favorite investment zones of Russian oligarchs, said on Monday that they would sanction those close to the Kremlin.
Wealthy Russians will risk having assets frozen in the UK, being banned from entering the territory, or doing business there. “We are not going to back down or stand by and listen to US threats of sanctions,” the Russian embassy in Washington responded.
Source: Ambito
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