NATO and Russia hold fruitless talks as fears for Ukraine’s security mount

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Wednesday of the possibility of a “new armed conflict in Europe” after talks between the alliance and Russia ended without any agreements or concessions that might reduce dangerously high tensions on the continent.

Stoltenberg said that ambassadors of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had refused the Kremlin’s key demand of a legally binding guarantee that Ukraine would never be invited to join the 30-country alliance.

The four-hour meeting, which marked the first time the NATO-Russia Council had met in more than two years, was held as an invasion-sized Russian force remained massed along the country’s western border with Ukraine.

Ukraine, which shares a 2,000-kilometre-long border with Russia, is not a member of NATO but has sought membership in the alliance since a pro-Western revolution in the country eight years ago, which Russia responded to by invading and annexing the strategic Crimean Peninsula.

and Britain all have small deployments training the Ukrainian military – as crossing a “red line.” Russia has protested repeatedly as NATO has expanded five times since the end of the Cold War 30 years ago, with the alliance taking in countries such as Poland, Romania and the Baltic states that once deferred to the Kremlin.

U.S., Russia make little headway in NATO talks as military remains at Ukraine border.

Grushko said that if NATO wanted to de-escalate the crisis, it should end training missions such as Canada’s 200-soldier Operation Unifier and stop sending weapons to the Ukrainian military.

But Russia has continued to send troops and equipment toward its border with Ukraine, even during this week’s intense diplomacy, which began Monday with a meeting between senior U.S.

The Ukraine crisis is due to be discussed again on Thursday in Vienna at a meeting of the 57-country Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a group that both Russia and Ukraine (as well as Canada, the U.S., and all European states) are members of.

Videos posted to social media this week, even as the talks in Geneva and Brussels were taking place, showed long trains carrying military equipment – including tanks and multiple-launch rocket systems usually stationed in Russia’s Far East – moving westward toward Ukraine.

Stoltenberg said NATO had proposed a schedule of future meetings to work toward potential new arms-control agreements, but that the Russian side “wasn’t ready to agree” to further talks.

The Biden administration has vowed to respond to any new Russian aggression against Ukraine with fresh sanctions targeting the Russian economy, as well as escalated support for the Ukrainian military.

Orysia Lutsevych, an expert on Ukraine at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, said she believed Russian military action against Ukraine was now “likely.” She said the argument over NATO membership for Ukraine was a distraction, and that Russia’s real goal was undoing the 2014 pro-Western revolution in Kyiv – and bringing Ukraine back under Russian control.