“According to analysts, “the position of the head of the Kremlin will not lead to sustainable peace””, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
According to analysts, “the position of the head of the Kremlin will not lead to sustainable peace.” American experts explained that “such demands of Putin concern the isolation of Ukraine and the weakening of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO).”
The ISW report analyzed a January 10 report by the Financial Times (FT) in which a former senior Kremlin official and another source said that “Putin would, in any such talks, maintain his pre-war demands to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, and to force the bloc to withdraw military contingents from the countries of Eastern Europe”.
These interlocutors told the FT that the Russian president “will try to change the rules of the international system to ensure that there are ‘no threats to Russia’, which is in fact consistent with his December 2021 ultimatum to the United States of America before a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”
Thus, analysts recalled, in 2021 Putin demanded from NATO:
- undertake not to accept Ukraine or any other countries as new members;
- that the United States uphold the ban on the expansion of the alliance, and that the bloc does not deploy military forces in the states that became NATO members after May 1997;
- ban any NATO military activity in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia,
- ban the deployment of medium-range missiles in areas that can reach the territory of the Russian Federation,
- prohibit the US from deploying intermediate-range missiles in Europe or nuclear missiles outside the territory of the States.
ISW noted that “Putin specifically used and intensified this narrative in 2021 to shape the information space and justify a full-scale invasion of Ukraine before the February 2022 attack.”
Meanwhile, analysts note that NATO “did not take any significant action to expand in Eastern Europe or advance Ukraine’s future NATO membership between the 2008 Bucharest Declaration, which promised Ukraine and Georgia possible NATO membership, and 2022.”
Previously, analysts of the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) proved that the Kremlin does not want to make compromises in the war against Ukraine, but wants its complete surrender.
Kyiv has repeatedly stated that it cannot agree to any territorial concessions by Russia or freezing of the conflict. Such a freeze, according to the Ukrainian authorities, will only help Russia better prepare for a new attack on Ukraine.
In an interview with American podcaster Lex Friedman published on January 5, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that the first negotiations on the end of the war will be with the newly elected US President Donald Trump.
“I think, on January 25 or another day, we will sit down first of all with Trump. We agree on how we can stop the war and Putin,” he said.
The president emphasized: “if Trump offers strong security guarantees for Ukraine, then after that there can be a conversation with the Russians.” “And only like that, not just the three of them sat down at once,” he added.