The US and its Nato allies had ignored Russia’s main security concerns: President Vladimir Putin
New Delhi: Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the United States and NATO had not addressed Moscow’s main security demands in their standoff over Ukraine, as US President Joe Biden announced an additional troop deployment in Eastern Europe.
In his first public comments on US and Nato responses to Russian proposals to rewrite the post-cold war security architecture, Putin said “Moscow’s concerns about the expansion of Nato and the deployment of strike weapons near its borders had not been taken into account, according to a Kremlin readout of the phone call with his French counterpart.”
Macron told Putin that “Russia had to respect the sovereignty of states,” Putin agreed to continue talks, so there was a feeling that “things have moved”, a French presidency official said.
The Pentagon said, “The Russian military buildup around Ukraine was unprecedented since the end of the cold war and, if unleashed, would cause horrific casualties.” The US has called a UN security council meeting on Monday for Russia to explain its military operations.
The diplomatic manoeuvres came as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, suggested the White House was panicking about an imminent Russian attack.
More than 100,000 Russian troops have massed at the border with Ukraine, prompting the US president, Joe Biden, to tell Zelenskiy, on Thursday there was “a distinct possibility that the Russians could invade Ukraine in February”.
In Washington, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, agreed: “We don’t think final decisions have been made.”
However, Milley said the current buildup of Russian troops was greater “than anything we have seen in recent memory”.
Washington and European capitals rejected Russia’s demands to veto Ukraine’s Nato membership but set out proposals on other ways to improve security on the continent in the unpublished documents.
(_Vinayak)
