This could mean a potential withdrawal of alliance troops from Poland and the Baltic states.
Vladimir Putin sees in negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine an opportunity to force NATO to abandon eastward expansion and return to the 1997 borders. To this end, the Kremlin proposes to include European representatives in the peace process, writes The Telegraph, citing sources in Western diplomatic circles.
Earlier, Yuri Ushakov, assistant to the Russian President for foreign policy issues, proposed involving Europeans in the negotiations on Ukraine.
He stated that the European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance have started to "take more seriously" Russia's proposals, and Europe's position regarding peace between Moscow and Kyiv is of "key importance."
However, as The Telegraph's sources explain, behind this actually lies the Kremlin's long-standing intention to achieve a rollback of NATO to the 1997 borders or, at a minimum, the withdrawal of troops and armaments from five alliance countries bordering Russia: Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, and Estonia. Western diplomats are unequivocally not ready to make concessions to the Russian side on this issue.
At the same time, The Telegraph's sources are convinced that a maximum rollback of NATO westward remains one of Putin's key conditions for ending the war in Ukraine.
They name the deprivation of Kyiv's de facto sovereignty as the second point. Such a position makes the true success of the technical negotiations announced for November in Abu Dhabi between representatives of Washington, Kyiv, and Moscow unlikely.
With the demand for "the withdrawal of all NATO military infrastructure to the 1997 positions", Moscow appealed to the alliance in December 2021, a few weeks before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov demanded that NATO "pack up its bags" and accused the alliance of allegedly seeking to "push back" Russia and "relegate it to a subordinate role", recalls Moscow Times.
"Doctor", lawyer, man with a camera and several strong guys. In Petropavlivska Borshchahivka, Russian special services took advantage of a specific Ukrainian wartime business 1515
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ПС Очредной пророссийский нарратив - слив. Цель - показать что Россия хочет переговоров и (или) мира...