Last weekend, a senior official in the Biden administration looked at Russia’s military pressure on Ukraine and said that the coming week of talks would give the Russian president a choice between diplomacy and severe economic penalties.
A week later, after talks in three European cities involving senior officials from dozens of countries, White House officials and senior diplomats say they still do not know which route Moscow will choose.
“We are ready to continue diplomacy to advance security and stability,” U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Thursday. “We are equally prepared even if Russia chooses a different path.”
Intense talks between Russia and its Western allies led to decisive threats and statements but ended with both sides remaining equally far from resolving the conflict that could spin and become one of the most serious security crises Europe has known in decades.
On Friday, tensions rose further. Ukraine announced that it was the victim of a huge cyber attack that it attributed to Russia, and the White House announced that it had information that Moscow was planning “fake escalation” operations in eastern Ukraine in order to create an excuse for invasion.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Friday that Moscow is starting to run out of patience. Russia asked the United States in December to respond in writing to its demands from the North Atlantic Defense Alliance, NATO. “We will not wait forever,” Lavrov said. “Our patience is running out … Everyone understands that the situation is not improving. The potential for conflict is growing.”
No further talks were scheduled, and the U.S. noted that the ball was in Moscow’s court.
Americans are pessimistic about Moscow’s intentions
“It’s hard to say whether the talks had any effect on Putin’s thinking because his thinking can not be read,” said Evelyn Perkas, a senior defense official in the former Obama administration. “If he already really intended to take military action against Ukraine, he might still do so.”
On the way to talks, U.S. officials hoped that cuts – the proposal to hold new talks on deploying missile batteries and troop drills – and sticks – in the form of military sanctions and restrictions on exports – would encourage Putin to take a diplomatic route instead of attacking Ukraine.
But in direct talks with the U.S. on Monday, in the NATO-Russia Council on Wednesday, and in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Thursday, Moscow reiterated its key demands that the U.S. and NATO have already rejected.
Russia wants NATO to announce in advance that it will not expand to Ukraine and other former Soviet states, reduce its ties with Ukraine and other former Soviet states, and restrict the deployment of troops to Allies in Eastern Europe.
U.S. and senior Western officials rejected those demands as “non-starters,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “U.S. diplomats left the meetings pessimistic about Moscow’s intentions and inflexibility, senior U.S. officials said.
“Escalation does not create the best environment for discussions”
Washington described the discussions this week as a way to voice disagreements and see what might be possible in future talks. But senior US officials have voiced growing distrust in Moscow, and increased forces near Ukraine have made it difficult for NATO and the American side to take Russian ideas about the future of security in Europe seriously.
“This escalation has clearly increased tensions and is not creating the best environment for real discussions,” Deputy State Secretary Wendy Sherman said after meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Monday.
On Friday, Brov blamed Washington for the lack of progress and said U.S. officials should have been willing to negotiate on Russia’s key demands. “The Americans have failed to study our proposal in order to reach a certain position,” Lavrov said. “They limited themselves to questions and verbal explanations. We went through that stage.”
U.S. officials say the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is real. Russia has sent more than 100,000 troops to the border with Ukraine and moved tanks, anti-tank vehicles, rocket launchers and other military equipment west of their bases in the Far East, US officials said on social media.
U.S. officials have pointed to the Russian invasion and annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and the escalation of the separatist war in eastern Ukraine, warning that they are now noticing the same signs of conflict.
“It gives you an indication of all the preparations they are making,” White House spokeswoman Jen Saki said, adding that a possible invasion could begin by mid-February.
Jeffrey Edmonds, a former White House adviser on Russia, said Moscow’s insistence on security requirements that the Kremlin knows were not applicable raises the question of whether the talks were more than a precedent for aggressive action.
“The behavior of the Russians throughout this stage of negotiations … shows that they never had a real desire to reach an agreed position in the negotiations,” he said.
“If NATO wants to dictate to us how and when to move our forces, that’s not really possible.”
And yet, the difficulty in this week’s talks and the tough approach of the Russians against Ukraine on the surface can certainly be part of Russia’s negotiation tactics to take with a heavy hand.
“The Russians are at least succeeding in shaking our self-confidence – that’s what they are doing in the negotiations,” said Sandy Warsaw, the former US ambassador to Russia. “Diplomacy may not have done its thing yet.”
While Russian officials have said Moscow does not intend to invade Ukraine, the Kremlin has warned it has no intention of withdrawing troops from the border.
“If NATO wants to dictate to us how and when to move our forces on Russian soil, it is not really possible,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday. “We are talking about Russian territory.”
One option is a large-scale operation designed to occupy the eastern half of Ukraine, overthrow the government or force it to negotiate, said Oleksandr Danilyuk, a former secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine. Another option is to attack missiles and fighter jets designed to destroy transport and military infrastructure, taking advantage of Ukraine’s outdated defenses, he said.
“A major violent act will frighten the West and they were willing to negotiate,” Daniliuk said in an interview.
On the other hand, some analysts say that Russia may use its military and security services to intervene in Ukraine but will avoid a full-scale military invasion, perhaps to avoid the most severe sanctions and pressure from the international community.
“They may be able to create another division in the West with the help of more gradual aggressive actions,” said Warsaw, an expert on Russia at the Atlantic Council, a research institute in Washington.
James Merson participated in the preparation of the article.