NATO will not comply with the demand of Russian President Putin to declare in advance that Ukraine may not become a NATO member, and that NATO should be less active in Central and Eastern Europe.
Those demands were called 'unacceptable' by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said this after a meeting with thirty NATO foreign ministers.
On Monday, the United States will start bilateral talks with Russia, and on Wednesday the Russians will meet with NATO. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken still hopes that tensions with Russia can be addressed through diplomacy. Stoltenberg says NATO must prepare for the possibility that negotiations with Russia will fail.
Putin is asking for guarantees that Ukraine will never become a NATO member. Elsewhere near the Russian border, Putin also no longer wants NATO’s close presence. Therefore, he advocates abolishing military exercises in Central and Eastern Europe. Both proposals are rejected by NATO.
‘Putin knows very well that his demands are totally unacceptable,’ former NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told NOS. ‘It’s as if he wants to go back to the situation before the fall of the Berlin Wall,’ De Hoop Scheffer said.
The Russian leader was able to make these demands after having made the West nervous in recent weeks. Russian troop formations have been gathering near the Ukrainian border. This has increased fears of an invasion in the Russian-backed eastern Ukraine.