The US on Wednesday deployed several thousand troops to bolster NATO forces in eastern Europe, as the leaders of France and Germany flagged trips to Moscow to address Western fears of an invasion of Ukraine.
With Russia refusing to pull back 100,000 troops poised on Ukraine’s borders, 1,000 US soldiers in Germany are being sent to Romania, and another 2,000 stationed in the US are being flown to Germany and Poland.
“As long as [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is acting aggressively, we are going to make sure we reassure our NATO allies in eastern Europe that we’re there,” US President Joe Biden said after the deployments were announced.
Photo: AP
In response, Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Grushko said the move would make it harder for a compromise between the two sides, calling the US deployments “destructive steps, which increase military tension and reduce scope for political decision.”
Western powers have been engaged in intense diplomatic efforts — coupled with the threat of sanctions against Putin’s inner circle — to deter what they fear to be a looming invasion of ex-Soviet Ukraine, despite strenuous denials from Moscow.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday said that he would soon travel to Moscow to discuss the crisis, while French President Emmanuel Macron said a similar trip might be on the cards — depending on upcoming talks with other world leaders.
Biden and Macron pledged to coordinate their response to the crisis in a telephone call on Wednesday, while the French president’s office said he would be talking to Putin again last night.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stressed that the US troop movements were to demonstrate commitment to the NATO alliance and that no US soldiers would be sent to fight in Ukraine, which is not a NATO member.
However, that is unlikely to assuage Putin, who has accused the US and NATO of seeking to “contain” Russia by placing troops and strategic arms on its border.
“Ukraine itself is just a tool to achieve this goal,” Putin said on Tuesday in his first major comments in weeks on the crisis.
Putin has demanded guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO and has implicitly threatened the former Soviet state with the massive military buildup.
Russia also wants NATO and the US to foreswear the deployment of missile systems near Russia’s borders and to pull back NATO forces in eastern Europe.
Putin has left the door open to talks, saying he was studying Western proposals set out last month in response to Russia’s demands and that he hoped that “in the end we will find a solution.”
However, in a phone call with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday, he noted “the unwillingness of NATO to adequately respond to the well-founded Russian concerns,” the Kremlin said.
The Kremlin also claimed it had China’s support in the standoff — backing that would be demonstrated when Putin meets Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing today.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was the latest NATO leader to visit Kiev on Wednesday in a show of support, meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
After the talks, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was focused “only on peace,” but added that it has the right to defend itself.
Rutte said it was “essential for dialogue to continue” between Russia and the other players.
Citing leaked documents, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that the Western proposals to Russia — set out in letters by NATO and the US last month — include arms control and trust-building measures to defuse the situation.
While a guarantee against Ukraine joining NATO was not offered, the documents proposed commitments by the US and Russia “to refrain from deploying offensive ground-launched missile systems and permanent forces with a combat mission in the territory of Ukraine,” El Pais reported.
“We did not make this document public,” Kirby said, without denying its authenticity.
He said that it confirmed that “NATO and its partners are unified in their resolve and open to constructive and serious diplomacy.”
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