(CN) — A second week of high-stakes talks ended on Friday with still no signs of breakthroughs between the West and Moscow over NATO's expansion onto Russia's doorstep nor success at defusing a simmering armed conflict in Ukraine, though both superpowers appeared eager to let the door for diplomacy remain open.
At a hotel on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday to reassess the state of a military and political crisis for which all sides share responsibility. It is becoming obvious that the outbreak of a major war in Ukraine would be disastrous for all involved.
Simmering since 2014, armed conflict in Ukraine has led to the deaths of about 14,000 civilians in a civil war in the predominantly Russian eastern regions, which are seeking more independence from Kyiv through military force. The conflict has crippled the country economically and politically and forced about 1 million people to flee their homes in Donbas, a heavily populated industrial hub. After years of frozen conflict, the region is described as a war zone resembling the trenches, mud flats and deserted towns of World War I.
In Geneva, Lavrov and Blinken held separate news conferences at the conclusion of 90-minute face-to-face talks. Lavrov obtained promises from Blinken to provide a written response from the United States to demands Russia made in December for NATO to stop seeking to recruit Ukraine into the alliance and to withdraw troops and weapons from Eastern Europe, such as in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland.
Blinken repeated warnings that Russia would suffer severe consequences if it chooses to invade Ukraine, something the Kremlin denies it intends to do despite a large military buildup along Ukraine's borders.
When asked by journalists, Blinken left open the possibility that U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin may meet for a second time since Biden took office a year ago.
“If we conclude and the Russians conclude that the best way to resolve things is through a further conversation between them, we’re certainly prepared to do that,” Blinken said.
Putin and the rest of Russia's elite are deeply upset over the continued expansion of NATO into the former Soviet bloc since the end of the Cold War.
The current Ukraine crisis goes back to a decision by U.S. President George W. Bush at a NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 to push for the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia into the military pact, what he termed as extending the “circle of freedom.” European allies at the time were opposed to further expansion.
In 2008, Russia was still on relatively good terms with Washington and its allies, but Putin objected vociferously to NATO's push into Ukraine and Georgia, former Soviet and tsarist Russia territories deeply tied into Russian history. Their inclusion into NATO would leave Russia encircled, a longstanding fear of Russian leaders, and massively weakened.
For now, then, Putin appears determined to put an end to NATO's expansion and he's called Ukrainian membership in the alliance a “red line.”
Starting in the autumn, Western intelligence agencies began warning about a large-scale mobilization of Russian troops and military hardware towards Ukraine and warned that Putin might order an invasion and seize Donbas and other parts of eastern Ukraine.
The simmering war started when a pro-Russian president was overthrown in a popular uprising in 2014. The ouster prompted Putin to order Russian troops based in the Crimean Peninsula to seize that territory, which is part of Ukraine but where Russia has long had a pivotal naval base and stationed troops on the Black Sea. Russia accused the West of being behind overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych because he had backtracked on a trade and cooperation deal to bring Ukraine closer to the EU and instead wanted closer economic ties with Russia.
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