Intellinews, 12/2/21

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on the West to start talks on a security deal and legal guarantees that would prevent Nato from expanding East.

“Western colleagues did not fulfil their respective oral obligations,” said Putin and reiterated that Russia sees threats in Nato exercises near its borders and has complained that the US is arming Ukraine with more weapons.

Putin’s proposal has been made as reports have come from Ukraine that Kyiv had moved 125,000 troops up to the contact line in Donbas, about half its active servicemen. Putin had earlier said that Moscow was concerned that Ukraine’s government would attempt to retake the Donbas region by force.

Moscow has been calling for a new post-Cold War security deal with the West since 2008, when then-president Dmitry Medvedev offer[ed] the EU a framework deal during his first foreign trip. The proposal was dismissed out of hand.
Putin brought the issue up again during a big foreign policy speech where he ordered Russian diplomats to get a new security deal with the West to govern Nato’s actions in countries neighbouring Russia.

On December 1 Putin followed up with the proposal to launch negotiations during a ceremony to swear in new ambassadors.

According to him, Russia intends to seek “reliable and long-term security guarantees” and in negotiations with the United States and its allies will “insist on the elaboration of specific agreements, excluding any Nato advance to the east,” Putin told the ambassadors. Putin stressed that it is precisely the legal guarantees that Moscow needs, because the Western countries have not fulfilled their oral obligations.

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By Alexander Baunov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12/1/21

…Russia, for its part, is discovering its own worst option. For three decades, the greatest fear of the Russian leadership was that Ukraine (and Belarus) would join NATO and move Western military infrastructure right up to Russia’s borders. Now it turns out that that can happen even without NATO, and in more real and long-term and less predictable ways. An aggrieved country that is building its entire identity on the rejection of everything Russian is far easier to turn into a fortified area on Russia’s border than a country confined by NATO procedures. In the absence of any security guarantees from a bloc, that country will be ready at the drop of a hat to welcome foreign aircraft, ships, and troops, and to equip its own army, leaping into action out of fear…

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