PARIS — Even as the Pentagon warned that Moscow continued to
deploy more forces to its border with Ukraine,
Russia’s foreign minister
suggested that there may be room to negotiate with the United States on at
least on some issues.
اضافة اعلان
At the same time, President Emmanuel Macron of France held a
phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Friday morning in the
hopes of easing the escalating tensions in Europe.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the United
States’ recent written response to its security demands contained “a kernel of
rationality” for a possible compromise on issues like missile deployments and
military exercises.
“If it depends on Russia, then there will be no war,” Lavrov
said in an interview with Russian radio. “We don’t want wars. But we also won’t
allow our interests to be rudely trampled, to be ignored.”
However, Russia has put a broad set of issues on the table —
essentially calling for a reshaping of the post-Cold War security arrangements
in Europe and a retreat of NATO forces from Eastern Europe. That is a
nonstarter for the United States and its Western allies.
Western officials say that Russia’s public statements, often
contradictory, do not square with the actions it has taken to poise its
military menacingly on Ukraine’s borders to the north, south and east.
So, the situation remains one of both contradiction and
confrontation.
Military forces continued to surround Ukraine en masse. The
Pentagon said that in the past 24 hours, more Russian forces were being moved
into the region. Meanwhile, the United States and its European allies continued
to send arms to Ukraine as NATO stepped up its defensive positions in Eastern
Europe.
At the center of the maelstrom, in Ukraine, the government urged
the public to remain calm, played down the immediacy of the threat and
expressed concern about the heightened messaging from both the West and Russia.
As Ukrainian soldiers dug into trenches along the snow-covered
eastern front, children were out sledding in Kyiv, the capital. Most people
went about their daily lives.
Neither Paris nor Berlin see the threat of a Russian invasion of
Ukraine with the same urgency as Washington or the countries closer to Ukraine,
including Poland and the Baltic states.
France has insisted in recent days on the need to “deescalate”
the crisis to avoid stumbling into a “self-fulfilling” conflict, fueled by
misperceptions and exaggerated speech. But it has also stood firmly with its
NATO allies in the standoff with Russia, offering, for instance, to send troops
to Romania.
Macron has long advocated a more conciliatory approach to Russia
than the United States or some of his European allies, and he has repeatedly
stressed the need to keep dialogue with Moscow firm but open.
In a statement released after their phone call, the Kremlin said
“the principal concerns of Russia went unaddressed.”
The Kremlin statement said Putin was still studying the U.S. and
NATO written responses and “after that will decide on its further actions.”
Putin has not commented publicly on the crisis since before
Christmas, leaving the West to largely speculate about his intentions.
Biden and Putin have not spoken one-on-one since a tense
“virtual summit” in early December. The Biden administration called a meeting
of the U.N. Security Council on Monday, which could make for a face-to-face
debate on Ukraine between the United States and Russia.
Macron’s attempts to reset relations with Russia have stumbled
and his enthusiasm for a rapprochement with Putin has waned in recent years —
especially after Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most prominent opponent, was poisoned
in an operation later revealed to be orchestrated by the Kremlin.
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