The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has dismantled three years of “maximum pressure” policy to Russia with a single phone call. The conversations about the Ukraine War – without Ukraine and without the European Union – have started on Tuesday in Riad, Saudi Arabia, with Washington concessions, which suggests that the entry of Ukraine into NATO and the recovery of all Ukrainian territories invaded By Russia they are not realistic objectives. This Wednesday is expected to be a new summit, this time “with European and non -European leaders,” the French president Emmanuele Macron announced.
The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have agreed to restart their diplomatic relations and form negotiating teams to begin to discuss the details of a “end of the permanent war.” Meanwhile, Russia not only comes out of western isolation, but it hardens its demands from a position of force while praising Trump’s policy. “If he had been president, the war would not have happened,” Lavrov said after the meeting in Riyadh.
“Now reject Ukraine in NATO is not enough,” said Russian exterior spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. “The alliance must leave Bucharest’s promises of 2008,” he added. At the 2008 NATO Summit, Washington pressed its allies to grant the candidate statute to Georgia and Ukraine. Given the rejection of European countries such as Germany, the partners only managed to agree on a phrase in the final statement: “We agreed that these countries will become NATO members.”
Russia has also rejected exchange Ukrainian territory through the occupied area of Kursk, controlled by kyiv, and has ruled out a deployment of European forces in the area after the agreement.
“The Kremlin is pointing out its total commitment to its maximalist demands of Ukrainian surrender,” said Pavel K. Baev, a researcher at Peace Research Institute of Oslo. “Putin may presume to have a position of strength or try to import it to achieve a better agreement with the hope of a transactional negotiation. He acknowledges that he knows his counterpart and has to reproduce the special chemistry between equals. Two very different characters of those who failed to reach a useful agreement at the Helsinki Summit in 2018 plan to test the strength of the other, ”he added.
In the last three years, the US has managed to add to the EU to its sanctions policy against Russia and continuous military assistance to Ukraine. Europe subordinated its defense policy to the NATO strategy and the community block left aside the search for a “strategic compass” to achieve the desired autonomy with respect to its transatlantic ally.
Now, the turn in Washington has not only dislodged to Europe, but has caused internal divisions between those that defend the Trumpist strategy and those that reject it, as well as on the new paths that open from now on. “The European Union will have to sit at the table at some point because it also has sanctions imposed [a Rusia]”, Said Rubio to the questions about the absence of European representatives in the conversations.
“In a few months, President Trump has changed the entire global conversation not about whether the war will end, but about how he will end,” said the US national security advisor, Mike Waltz, who also participated in Riyad’s meeting.
However, there was a time, in the first months of war, in which it seemed that Putin had shot down the cylinder head having revitalized the Atlantic Alliance. Gone were the discussions prior to the invasion by openly questioning the future and meaning of NATO. “No one can tell me that today’s NATO is a structure that, in its foundations, remains pertinent,” said Macron, that he had declared the organization in “cerebral palsy.”
“Putin wanted less on their borders and is getting more NATO,” said his then general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg. The statement – with all its variants – repeated it again and again the Western leaders. “Putin sought Finland from Europe and will get Europe’s otan -ization, ”said US president Joe Biden. The invasion had increased defense spending, new military deployments and even the entry of two new members, Sweden and Finland, the last one with a shared border of almost 1,400 kilometers with Russia.
The NATO of discord
The winds have changed again and now Zelenski sees how his main valid for three years of war wants to cut the tap to military aid and negotiate an end with the occupant power. The Ukrainian president has rejected the current process and has canceled a trip to Riad coinciding with the conversations to avoid “legitimacy,” Reuters reported citing Ukrainian sources. Zelenski will travel to Saudi Arabia on March 10 and plans to meet with a Washington delegation in kyiv, according to the EFE agency.
“The objective is to put an end to this conflict in a fair, lasting, sustainable and acceptable way for all the parties involved,” said Rubio. For his part, the National Security Advisor has confirmed that there will have to be a discussion about territory and security guarantees. At the end of March 2022, Ukraine has already offered to renounce his entry into NATO in exchange for these guarantees in negotiations that did not bear fruit. Several information then pointed out that former British prime minister, Boris Johnson, had pressed kyiv so that the agreement did not sign and continue the war. Zelenski has denied those pressures.
Until now, Ukraine had defended that his entry into NATO was the only security guarantee on which he could trust. kyiv often recalled the 1994 Budapest memorandum for which Ukraine resigned from the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for Russian security guarantees, USA, China, France and the United Kingdom, among others. Unfulfilled guarantees. Given the future NATO veto to kyiv, Zelenski now bets on the deployment of American and European soldiers in Ukraine.
“The security guarantees of certain countries are important. The European Union or the United States could have given us the hope of being a member of NATO, but I do not see the United States, or some of its European interlocutors, in favor of being members. This means that they are in tune with Russia’s foreign policy desires, ”said Zelenski.
“If this is the case, then a Ukrainian strong army will be very important. And the troops of some strong countries, such as the United States, should be deployed in Ukraine, ”added the president, who visited Turkey Tuesday, one of the countries that had been offered to mediate between kyiv and Moscow.
For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Serguéi Lavrov had already ruled out hours before accepting a deployment of troops of NATO members in Ukraine. “The appearance of forces from the same NATO countries under another flag, whether national or the European Union, does not change anything. That is still unacceptable. ”
Source: www.eldiario.es
