As Russia, NATO, and the United States prepare for talks in Geneva on Jan. 10 over Russia’s military build-up at Ukraine’s eastern border, Russia continues to feed the flames of a possible military incursion with a statement by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the U.S. and NATO are intent on escalating a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine.
Only hours after a Dec. 31 phone call between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joseph Biden, which a Kremlin spokesperson had noted as constructive, Lavrov issued a provocative statement in which he accused NATO and the U.S. of supporting the “militaristic intentions of Kyiv,”
according to the New York Times.
“Unfortunately, we see the United States and other NATO nations supporting the militaristic intentions of Kyiv, provisioning Ukraine with weapons and sending military specialists,” Lavrov said.
Currently more than 100,000 Russian troops are massed on Ukraine’s eastern border in what President Putin now all but acknowledges is a move to pressure NATO to provide Russia with security guarantees that Ukraine will remain within the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. He says Russia has had little choice but to protect itself from what he alleges is a slow-roll of NATO forces towards Russia’s western borders, including the provision of military weaponry to NATO members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
During a Kremlin press conference last week, he bluntly stated that NATO and the U.S. have forced Russia into a corner.
Putin and the Kremlin fail to address the fact of the 2014 incursion into Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula, during which Russian troops staging from the Russian Naval Base in Sevastopol – which Ukraine gave Russia the right to maintain in the 1990s – gradually occupied the peninsula.
Mention is never made of Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 and its direct support in nurturing and standing up two separatist “republics,” today recognized only by Russia. Or the fact that Russian military forces are implicated in the 2014 downing of a commercial airliner that killed hundreds.
Putin also fails to point out that the Trump administration withdrew from a strategic nuclear treaty because the Kremlin was not abiding by the terms.
Calls in December between Biden and Putin have promoted a diplomatic dialogue between the two countries and NATO, but the Kremlin has not responded to Washington’s request to withdraw military forces from Ukraine’s border.
Massive amounts of Russian troops and military hardware remain in both eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
Even the U.S. Congress, so divided along political lines, has found common ground in its view of Russia’s recent moves against Ukraine with several Republican members of the U.S. Congress declaring that they were ready to consider additional military funding for Ukraine if Russia does not stand down.
President Biden has maintained contact with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as the crisis has developed. After a call on Jan. 3, President Zelensky tweeted that he and President Biden had focused on “the joint actions of Ukraine, U.S. and partners in keeping peace in Europe.
“Today we are talking about the future not only of Ukraine, but also of European security and a world order based on rules and democratic values,“
said President Zelensky.
The U.S. has provided substantial development and military aid to Ukraine since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, the nationwide protests that led to the downfall of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, whose politics supported the Kremlin’s ambitions in Ukraine. That military support includes anti-tank weaponry and patrol boats for the Azov Sea, which Russia has attempted to blockade.
President Putin has long stated that Ukraine and Russia have a long common history and that for that reason Ukraine, in his view an artificial state promoted by the West, should remain within the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.
