The Joe Biden Administration has already received the Kremlin’s written response to the letter that the United States delivered last Wednesday with proposals to resolve the Ukraine crisis through diplomatic channels. US government sources have confirmed this Monday to Washington Post the arrival of the Russian response, but they have avoided detailing any aspect of the content, in the same way that the letter from Washington was not made public last week. This Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, are scheduled to speak by phone.
The talks continue these days without tangible news and with obvious mistrust, at least judging by public statements. The Kremlin maintains that it does not intend to invade Ukraine, but it maintains more than 100,000 soldiers on the border and the memory of the illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 is etched among NATO allied countries. To reduce the pressure on the former Soviet republic, he demands guarantees from the Defense Alliance that it will not expand in Eastern Europe and, specifically, that it will not incorporate Ukraine as a new partner, conditions that are inadmissible for Western powers.
“It would be unproductive to negotiate in public,” said the government source cited by the post regarding the response received from Russia. Last week, the government of Vladimir Putin limited himself to pointing out that the approach sent by the United States and NATO – which also delivered its letter in parallel – did not invite optimism.
The shock became palpable this Monday at the United Nations Security Council meeting in New York. For his part, Biden stressed that the United States is “prepared for anything” in the face of the possible consequences of this escalation. The president made this statement precisely the morning he was receiving the Qatari emir, Tamim Bin Hamad al Thani, at the White House, whom he seeks as an ally to guarantee the electricity supply in Europe in the event that the conflict with Russia, which is an important source for the old continent, it intensifies.
The United States also maintains 8,500 soldiers on “alert” status to mobilize them in case of need and Biden said on Friday that he planned to send troops “in the short term” to Eastern Europe and NATO countries (Ukraine is not one of them). ). Pentagon spokesman John Kirby clarified on Monday that the deployment mentioned by the president would be outside the 8,500 troops prepared.
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