Kremlin revives 2021 ultimatums: ISW reveals Russia’s real goal in peace talks
Photo: Russian leader Vladimir Putin (Getty Images)
Russia is trying to use trilateral talks with the United States and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi to push for a revision of the entire European security system. Moscow is returning to the ultimatums it presented to Washington and NATO in 2021, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Analysts highlight a statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that an agreement on the future architecture of European security must be reached first, before moving on to resolving the war in Ukraine. He called this approach "absolutely reasonable."
An unnamed source in the Russian delegation at the Abu Dhabi talks expressed a similar position.
According to the source, ending the war in Ukraine is just one item on a broader discussion about European security, which Moscow intends to make the main topic of the negotiations.
ISW notes that statements about the European security architecture relate to Russia's December 2021 demands that NATO stop deploying new weapons and military personnel in countries that joined the Alliance after 1997.
In effect, this would give Russia veto power over NATO policy and restrict countries' sovereign right to choose whether to join the North Atlantic Alliance.
ISW emphasizes that the Kremlin has recently revived its original demands to NATO. These contradict statements by US presidential special envoy Jared Kushner that every country should retain its sovereignty and control over its own security and alliances after peace talks to end the war in Ukraine, and that NATO will remain the central element of Europe's collective defense.
"The Kremlin has repeatedly tried to justify its war against Ukraine by falsely claiming that the possibility of NATO expansion to include Ukraine threatened Russian security. The Kremlin has long alleged that NATO expansion was one of the “root causes” of the war that peace talks must resolve.[5] Neither NATO nor Ukraine, in fact, took any meaningful action towards bringing Ukraine into NATO between 2008 and 2022, however," the analysts explained.
They also noted that NATO has never posed a threat to Russia's security. Nevertheless, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 in an attempt to destroy the unity of NATO and the West.
"The Kremlin’s long-running cognitive warfare campaign falsely blaming NATO and Ukraine for threatening Russian sovereignty aims to justify Russian efforts to reassert control over former Soviet states and does not reflect a genuine Russian concern for its security," ISW concluded.
Russia's new demand at the negotiations
As a reminder, according to sources cited by RBC-Ukraine, on the first day of talks in Abu Dhabi, the Russian delegation brought up its proposals to change the security architecture — proposals Putin had presented to US President Joe Biden in December 2021.
These included a rejection of NATO expansion and restrictions on Western military cooperation with Ukraine.
Washington is also promoting the idea of a pan-European security agreement.
US presidential special envoy Jared Kushner said that the United States wants to build a security architecture that would prevent the war from starting again.
However, the proposal was met with caution in the EU. According to Bloomberg, Europe insists that Russia must end the war first.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy outlined three steps that must be taken before a dialogue with Russia on European security can begin.
