NATO

Putin's demands for peace include an end to NATO enlargement, sources say

Reuters — Wed, 28 May 2025 15:09:03 GMT

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin's conditions for ending the war in Ukraine include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards and lift a chunk of sanctions on Russia, according to three Russian sources with knowledge of the negotiations.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the deadliest European conflict since World War II and has shown increasing frustration with Putin in recent days, warning on Tuesday the Russian leader was "playing with fire" by refusing to engage in ceasefire talks with Kyiv as his forces made gains on the battlefield.

After speaking to Trump for more than two hours last week, Putin said that he had agreed to work with Ukraine on a memorandum that would establish the contours of a peace accord, including the timing of a ceasefire. Russia says it is currently drafting its version of the memorandum and cannot estimate how long that will take.

Kyiv and European governments have accused Moscow of stalling while its troops advance in eastern Ukraine.

"Putin is ready to make peace but not at any price," said one senior Russian source with knowledge of top-level Kremlin thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The three Russian sources said Putin wants a "written" pledge by major Western powers not to enlarge the U.S.-led NATO alliance eastwards — shorthand for formally ruling out membership to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova and other former Soviet republics.

Russia also wants Ukraine to be neutral, some Western sanctions lifted, a resolution of the issue of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the West, and protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine, the three sources said.

The first source said that, if Putin realizes he is unable to reach a peace deal on his own terms, he will seek to show the Ukrainians and the Europeans by military victories that "peace tomorrow will be even more painful."

The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment on Reuters' reporting. Putin and Russian officials have repeatedly said any peace deal must address the "root causes" of the conflict — Russian shorthand for the issue of NATO enlargement and Western support for Ukraine.

Kyiv has repeatedly said that Russia should not be granted veto power over its aspirations to join the NATO alliance. Ukraine says it needs the West to give it a strong security guarantee with teeth to deter any future Russian attack.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's administration did not respond to a request for comment.

NATO has also in the past said that it will not change its "open door" policy just because Moscow demands it. A spokesperson for the 32-member alliance did not respond to Reuters' questions.

Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops.

Russia currently controls just under one fifth of the country. Though Russian advances have accelerated over the past year, the war is costing both Russia and Ukraine dearly in terms of casualties and military spending.

Reuters reported in January that Putin was growing concerned by the economic distortions in Russia's wartime economy, amid labor shortages and high interest rates imposed to curb inflation. The price of oil, the bedrock of Russia's economy, has declined steadily this year.

Trump, who prides himself on having friendly relations with Putin and has expressed his belief the Russian leader wants peace, has warned that Washington could impose further sanctions if Moscow delays efforts to find a settlement. Trump suggesting on social media on Sunday that Putin had "gone absolutely CRAZY" by unleashing a massive aerial attack on Ukraine last week.

The first source said that if Putin saw a tactical opportunity on the battlefield, he would push further into Ukraine — and that the Kremlin believed Russia could fight on for years no matter what sanctions and economic pain were imposed by the West.

A second source said that Putin was now less inclined to compromise on territory and was sticking to his public stance that he wanted the entirety of four regions in eastern Ukraine claimed by Russia.

"Putin has toughened his position," the second source said of the question of territory.

NATO enlargement

As Trump and Putin joust in public over the outlook for peace in Ukraine, Reuters could not determine whether the intensification of the war and the toughening of positions heralds determination to reach a deal or the collapse of talks.

In June last year, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.

In addition to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, Russia currently controls almost all of Luhansk, more than 70% of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. It also occupies a sliver of the Kharkiv and Sumy regions, and is threatening Dnipropetrovsk.

Former U.S. President Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab and have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces.

Putin casts the war as a watershed moment in Moscow's relations with the West which he says humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow's sphere of influence.

At the 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO leaders agreed that Ukraine and Georgia would one day become members. Ukraine in 2019 amended its constitution committing to the path of full membership of NATO and the European Union.

Trump has said that previous U.S. support for Ukraine's NATO membership bid was a cause of the war, and has indicated that Ukraine will not get membership. The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Putin, who rose to the top Kremlin job in 1999, has repeatedly returned to the issue of NATO enlargement, including in his most detailed remarks about a possible peace in 2024.

In 2021, just two months before the Russian invasion, Moscow proposed a draft agreement with NATO members that, under Article 6, would bind NATO to "refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States." U.S. and NATO diplomats said at the time that Russia could not have a veto on expansion of the alliance.

Russia wants a pledge on NATO in writing because Putin thinks Moscow was misled by the United States after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall when U.S. Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not expand eastwards, two of the sources said.

There was such a verbal promise, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Director William J. Burns said in his memoires, but it was never formalized - and it was made at a time when the collapse of the Soviet Union had not occurred.

NATO, founded in 1949 to provide security against the Soviet Union, says it poses no challenge to Russia - though its 2022 assessment of peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area identified Russia as the most "significant and direct threat".

Russia's invasion of Ukraine that year prompted Finland to join NATO in 2023, followed by Sweden in 2024.

Western European leaders have repeatedly said that if Russia wins the Ukraine war, it could one day attack NATO itself - a step that would trigger a world war. Russia dismisses such claims as baseless scaremongering, but has also warned the war in Ukraine could escalate into a broader conflict.

]]>

Finland's NATO membership celebrated at FinnFest 2023

Jennifer Kotila — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 11:44:00 GMT

DULUTH — It was an overflow crowd for the keynote panel on Finland, the United States and European and American Security at last week's 40th annual FinnFest.

FinnFest attendees were aware that Finnish Ambassador to the U.S. Mikko Hautala and Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, a retired four-star general with the U.S. Air Force and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO (2013-2016), were speakers on the panel and retired U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson was the moderator.

They did not know that the “member of United States Congress” on the panel was U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar until she walked onto the stage with the other panelists.

The main focus of the panel was what Finland’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty in April of 2023 meant for European and American security in relation to Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. The panel took place July 28 in the Lake Superior Ballroom at the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center.

FinnFest is an annual gathering of Finnish Americans and others interested in Finnish culture and heritage. It includes educational workshops on culture and history, musical performances, Finnish film presentations and the Tori marketplace and pop-up cafe featuring Finnish food.

Before becoming the Finnish ambassador to the U.S., Hautala was the Finnish ambassador to Russia from 2016-2020.

“His insight will not only be helpful for you today, but also helped all the Nordic countries and our country as we debated and dealt with the important issue of Finland and Sweden getting into NATO,” Klobuchar, D-Minn., said.

Sweden has not yet entered NATO, but Klobuchar said a vote is expected to take place this fall.

Breedlove spent much of his career in Europe and said he worked to forward NATO and Finland.

“I first stood on the inner-German border in 1983 as Captain Breedlove of the U.S. Army,” he said. “I served thereafter seven times in Europe, in the Air Forces of this nation and also all the nations of NATO as ... Supreme Commander. I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this great country joining our Alliance, and we’ve been growing stronger together.”

Klobuchar was introduced by Wilson as a bipartisan, results-oriented leader in Congress for the accession of Finland and Sweden to the North Atlantic Treaty, the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and many other foreign security and domestic issues.

Klobuchar informed the crowd that she woke up in Washington, D.C., that morning after voting the night of July 27 on the defense bill, which passed with bipartisan support in an 86-11 vote. The bill included funding for NATO and Ukraine.

Noting she had visited Ukraine in August 2022 and witnessed the “incredible resolve in the Ukrainian people,” Klobuchar said, “So much of (that resolve) was the leadership of our country and President Biden and both Democrats and Republicans, which is very key to all of this, standing together in Washington to this day, with that vote last night, and saying that we stand with democracies, we stand with Ukraine, and part of this was the importance of Finland and Sweden being part of NATO.”

Klobuchar also recalled the words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressing the world as he stood on the streets of Kiev on the night of the Russian invasion, saying three simple words, “We are here.”

“What you now have seen from America, from Finland, from our NATO allies, is a call that I also think (Russian President) Vladmir Putin did not expect,” she said. “We are here, too, and we are here with democracy.”

Hautala noted that he spent part of the day July 27 with the Ukrainian community in the Twin Cities, some of whom were refugees arriving in the U.S. last year after the invasion.

“The basic message I got from them, in those hours I spent with them, was an undefeated spirit to not only survive but also succeed and build a better Ukraine,” he said, noting a special connection between Finland and Ukraine based on their history with Russia. “We do realize what it means when Russia invades your country illegally, tries to subjugate you, tries to take your territories and there’s horrible violence involved.”

Finland’s history with Russian invasion includes the Winter War, which lasted from November 1939 to March 1940, with Finland losing 800 men a day during the peak of the fighting, according to Hautala. Finland’s population at the time was 4 million people.

“This is something that brings, mentally, the Finns and the Ukrainians together,” Hautala said. “They also seek strength from our story. They see that we survived, we managed to build a new Finland, and, after all those decades, we are part of NATO. But, not less meaningful, we are six times in a row the happiest nation on Earth.”

Finland’s accession to NATO

Hautala explained there were two triggers that drove Finland to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after decades of independence from a military alliance, the first of which was Putin’s demands to the U.S. in early December of 2021 that NATO not allow any additional countries to join the alliance.

“We concluded that, if this kind of an arrangement becomes a fact, it would permanently mean that we are left in a gray zone with the Russians, waiting on what their subsequent design could be,” he said. “That was impossible for us really to accept, because our principle has always been that we may join and we may apply, and Russians were trying to take that possibility away from us.”

While Finland and the U.S. have been strong partners for about three decades and Finland has worked closely with the alliance for about 20 years, according to Hautala, it was the “brutal attack” on Ukraine that finally drove Finland and Sweden to apply for "accession," the formal process to become a party to the treaty and a NATO member.

“(Finnish) President (Sauli) Niinisto said publicly the very morning of the attack that now the masks are off, we can only see the cold face of war,” Hautala said, noting it was a wakeup call for Finland’s population that it had to join the alliance soon.

“As the General knows, what happened with Ukraine kind of woke people up, not only from the pandemic malaise, but also just from this long slumber of not realizing how valuable it was to keep our friends close,” Klobuchar said.

The accession of Finland, and soon, Sweden is “bringing all the Nordics for the first time in history ... to the same alliance,” Hautala said. “This will have profound meaning, not only for Finland, but for all the Nordics, including NATO and defense of northern Europe — NATO’s northern flank.”

The U.S. Senate voted 95-1 to allow Finland to join, and Klobuchar told the story of receiving a thank-you note from President Niinisto for her speech on the Senate floor. She cast her vote following the only senator who voted no.

“What I said that day is still true today, that Finland is a stellar example of a country that looks beyond its borders, it has a commitment to peace and stability, it’s an economic powerhouse, it has a sophisticated reserve force of 900,000 strong,” she said, noting that she also addressed her “no vote” colleague, saying, “Perhaps the senator from Missouri has never visited the country of Finland. Perhaps he is not aware of all the technical advances and all the prowess that they would bring to NATO.”

]]>

U.S. says Moscow has 'failed' in war aims, pledges more military aid to Ukraine

Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets / Reuters — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 12:42:21 GMT

KYIV — The United States will reopen its embassy in Ukraine soon, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday after he and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv, promising more military aid and hailing the fight against Russia's invasion.

Both men said the fact they were able to come to Kyiv was proof of Ukraine's tenacity in forcing Moscow to abandon an assault on the capital last month.

"What you've done in repelling the Russians in the battle of Kyiv is extraordinary and inspiring quite frankly to the rest of the world," Austin told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a meeting overnight after a train journey from Poland. "We are here to support you in any way possible."

Said Blinken: "The reason we're back is because of you, because of the extraordinary courage, leadership and success that you've had in pushing back this horrific Russian aggression."

The meeting between the U.S. delegation and Ukraine's leaders ran for three hours, more than double the allotted time, a U.S. official said.

"In terms of Russia’s war aims, Russia has already failed and Ukraine has already succeeded," Blinken told a briefing in Poland after returning.

U.S. officials said Austin and Blinken pledged new assistance worth $713 million for Zelenskyy's government and other countries in the region. An extra $322 million in military aid for Ukraine would take the total U.S. security assistance since the invasion to about $3.7 billion, one official said.

"It will provide support for capabilities Ukraine needs, especially the fight in the Donbas," the official said. It would also help Ukraine's armed forces transition to more advanced weapons and air defense systems that were essentially NATO compatible, the official added.

Russia's ambassador in Washington said Moscow had sent a diplomatic note demanding a halt to U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine.

Russia has always denied intending to overthrow Ukraine's government. Western countries say that was its aim from the outset but it failed in the face of Ukrainian resistance.

Just weeks ago, Kyiv was a frontline city under curfew and bombardment, with tens of thousands of Russian troops massing on its northern outskirts and residents sheltering from artillery in its metro stations.

Today, the nearest Russian troops are hundreds of miles away, normal life is returning to the capital, Western leaders have been visiting and countries are reopening their embassies.

Blinken said U.S. diplomats would first return to Lviv and should be back in Kyiv within weeks. The White House announced President Joe Biden had nominated Bridget Brink, now U.S. ambassador in Slovakia, to be the new envoy to Kyiv.

But despite Ukraine having repelled the assault on Kyiv, the war is far from over. Russia has regrouped its forces and sent more troops in to eastern Ukraine. Last week it launched a massive assault there in an attempt to capture eastern provinces known as the Donbas.

RAILWAY STATIONS HIT

Five railway stations came under fire in western and central Ukraine on Monday, causing an unspecified number of casualties, Ukrainian television quoted state-run Ukrainian Railways as saying. Oleksander Kamyshin, the company's chief, said the attacks took place in the space of an hour.

All of the country was placed under an unusually long air raid warning for two hours on Monday morning.

Across the border in Russia's Bryansk region near eastern Ukraine, authorities were battling a huge blaze at a fuel depot.

Neither side publicly linked the fire to the war, but Russia had accused Ukraine of a helicopter attack in that area last week. Unverified images on the internet showed a sudden explosion, and other images show blazes in two separate locations simultaneously. In the past, Ukraine has declined to comment or denied accusations of cross border strikes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had thwarted an attempt to assassinate a high profile Russian journalist by Ukrainian agents backed by the West. The FSB security service said it had arrested a group planning to kill Vladimir Solovyov, host of a talk show on Russia's main state television station and one of the most prominent voices in support of the invasion.

Before the U.S. officials' visit, Ukraine had drawn up a list of weapons urgently needed from the United States, such as anti-missile systems, anti-aircraft systems, armored vehicles and tanks, Zelenskyy aide Igor Zhovkva told NBC News on Sunday.

In a daily update on the conflict, Britain's defense ministry said Russia had made only minor advances in parts of Donbas.

"Without sufficient logistical and combat support enablers in place, Russia has yet to achieve a significant breakthrough," it said.

WAR GRINDS ON

The relative calm in Kyiv is a contrast with the south and east of the country, where the war grinds on relentlessly.

Some 200 miles southeast of Kyiv, Russian missile strikes on an oil refinery and power plant in Kremenchuk killed one person and wounded seven, the governor of the Poltava region said. Moscow said it had destroyed oil production facilities.

Russia also fired rockets at two towns in the central Vinnytsia region, causing an unspecified number of deaths and injuries, regional Governor Serhiy Borzov reported.

Ukraine's general staff described Russian shelling and assaults along most of the front in the east, including missile and bomb attacks on a huge steel works in Mariupol where the last Ukrainian defenders are holed up in a city destroyed during two months of Russian siege and bombardment. Moscow said it was opening a humanitarian corridor to let civilians out of the plant; Kyiv said no agreement had been reached.

Moscow, which describes its actions in Ukraine as a "special military operation," denies targeting civilians.

(Additional reporting by Simon Lewis; writing by Michael Perry and Peter Graff; editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Clarence Fernandez and Philippa Fletcher.)

]]>

Russia says crippled warship to be towed back to port, as Ukraine claims missile hit

Pavel Polityuk and Oleksandr Kozhukhar / Reuters — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 12:31:00 GMT

KYIV/LVIV, Ukraine — Russia said the crew of its Black Sea fleet flagship were evacuated on Thursday and measures were being taken to tow the ship back to port after an explosion of ammunition on board that Ukraine said was caused by a missile strike.

Russia's defense ministry said the fire on the Soviet-era missile cruiser Moskva had been contained, but left the ship badly damaged. It did not acknowledge the ship had been attacked and said the cause of the fire was under investigation.

Ukraine's southern military command said that it hit the warship with a Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile and that it had started to sink.

Reuters was unable to verify either side's statements.

The loss or disabling of the Moskva would be another blow for Russia — on the 50th day of its war in Ukraine — as it readies for a new assault in the eastern Donbas region that is likely to define the outcome of the conflict.

Russia's navy has launched cruise missiles into Ukraine and its activities in the Black Sea are crucial to supporting land operations in the south of the country, where it is battling to seize full control of the port of Mariupol.

Russian news agencies said the Moskva, commissioned in 1983, was armed with 16 anti-ship Vulkan cruise missiles with a range of at least 440 miles.

Kyiv says the Moskva featured in one of the landmark early exchanges of the war, when Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island, a small outcrop in the Black Sea, told the ship to "Go f--- yourself" after it demanded they surrender.

'MASSING TROOPS'

Russian forces have pulled back from some northern parts of Ukraine after suffering heavy losses and failing to take the capital Kyiv. Ukraine and its Western allies say Moscow is redeploying for a new offensive.

"Russian forces are increasing their activities on the southern and eastern fronts, attempting to avenge their defeats," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Wednesday night video address.

Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said in televised comments on Thursday that Russia was massing troops not only along the Russia-Ukraine border, but also in Belarus and Moldova's breakaway Transdniestria region.

Authorities in Transdniestria, which borders southern Ukraine, have previously denied Russia was preparing forces there to deploy in Ukraine.

The Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions in the country's east were being hit by missile strikes, Malyar said. Kharkiv's governor said four civilians had been killed by shelling.

Russia said on Wednesday that more than 1,000 Ukrainian marines from one of the scattered units still holding out in the shattered city had surrendered. Ukrainian officials did not comment.

If it is taken, Mariupol — Ukraine's main Sea of Azov port that has been besieged and bombarded for weeks — would be the first major city to fall to Russian forces since they invaded on Feb. 24.

Its capture would allow Russia to reinforce a land corridor between separatist-held eastern areas and the Crimea region it seized and annexed in 2014, and free up forces for a wider offensive.

HUMANITARIAN CORRIDORS

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said nine humanitarian corridors had been agreed on for Thursday to evacuate civilians, including by private car, from Mariupol.

Ukraine says tens of thousands of people are believed to have been killed in Mariupol.

Mariupol's mayor, Vadym Boichenko, said Russia had brought in mobile crematoria "to get rid of evidence of war crimes" — a statement that it was not possible to verify independently.

Moscow has blamed Ukraine for civilian deaths and accused Kyiv of denigrating Russian armed forces.

In the village of Lubianka northwest of Kyiv, from where Russian forces had tried and failed to subdue the capital before retreating, a message to Ukrainians had been written on the wall of a house that had been occupied by Russian troops.

"We did not want this ... forgive us," it said.

The Kremlin says it launched a "special military operation" to demilitarize and "liberate" Ukraine from nationalist extremists, a message villagers said had been repeated to them by the Russian troops.

"To liberate us from what? We're peaceful ... We're Ukrainians," Lubianka resident Viktor Shaposhnikov said.

A mission of experts set up by Organization for Security and Cooperation and Europe (OSCE) nations said on Wednesday it had found evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity by Russia in Ukraine.

Russia has denied targeting civilians and said some reports have been staged for propaganda purposes.

Andriy Nyebytov, head of the Kyiv region police, said more than 800 bodies had been found in three districts which had been occupied by Russian forces.

"We are finding terrible things: buried and hidden bodies of people who were tortured and shot, and who died as a result of mortar and artillery fire," Nyebytov said in televised comments. His statements could not immediately be verified.

RUSSIA ISOLATED

Moscow's incursion, the biggest attack on a European state since 1945, has seen more than 4.6 million people flee abroad, killed or wounded thousands and left Russia increasingly isolated on the world stage.

Western-led sanctions have triggered the worst economic crisis in Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, say analysts. More than 600 companies, including McDonalds, have announced their withdrawal from Russia, which will directly cause the loss of about 1 million jobs.

Overall, 2.6 million people may fall below Russia's official poverty line this year, the World Bank estimates.

The conflict has also galvanized NATO and prompted Russia's neighbors Sweden and Finland to discuss joining the Western military alliance.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council and one of President Vladimir Putin's closest allies, warned on Thursday that such a move would force Russia to bolster its defenses in the Baltic region, including by deploying nuclear weapons.

(Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets and Elizabeth Piper in Kyiv, Max Hunder in London, David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Reuters bureaus; writing by Michael Perry and Alex Richardson; editing by Stephen Coates and Hugh Lawson.)

]]>

West to bolster Ukraine aid as Russian assault enters second month

John Chalmers and Natalia Zinets / Reuters — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 13:31:00 GMT

BRUSSELS/LVIV/MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Western leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday will agree to strengthen their forces in Eastern Europe and increase military aid to Ukraine as the Russian assault on its neighbor entered its second month.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged them to go further and repeated his call for a no-fly zone over his country, where thousands of people have been killed, millions become refugees, and cities pulverized since Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed his invasion on Feb. 24.

UNICEF said on Thursday that more than half of Ukrainian children had now been driven from their homes.

In Mariupol, the besieged southern port that has come to symbolize Ukraine's plight, people were burying their dead.

In a part of the city now captured by Russians, a patch of grass between charred hulks of blasted apartment buildings had become a makeshift graveyard, with freshly-dug mounds marked with plastic flowers and crosses made from broken window frames. The thud of explosions could be heard in the distance.

Viktoria was burying her 73-year-old stepfather Leonid, killed when the car ferrying him to a hospital was blown up 12 days ago.

"This guy had taken a seat instead of me and then they all got blown up in that car," she told Reuters, pointing to the mangled remains of the vehicle.

"It could have been me," she sobbed.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been hiding in basements in Mariupol with no running water, food, medicine or power. Ukrainian officials accused Russia on Thursday of having forcibly deported 15,000 people from the city to Russia. Moscow denies this.

'RUINOUS COSTS'

In a month of fighting, Ukraine has fended off what many Western military analysts had anticipated would be a quick Russian victory. So far Russia has failed to capture a single major city. Its armored columns have barely moved in weeks, besieging cities in the east and stalled at the gates of Kyiv, taking heavy casualties and running low on supplies.

Ukrainian officials say they are shifting now onto the offensive in much of the country. On Thursday they said their forces had destroyed the "Orsk," a large Russian landing ship near the Russian-occupied port of Berdyansk on the Azov Sea.

"Yes, it's destroyed," Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar told a video briefing. The ship was capable of carrying 45 armored personnel carriers and 400 people, she said.

Video footage, which Reuters was able to confirm was filmed from the shore inside Berdyansk, showed a column of smoke rising up from a blaze beside a dock in the port, and the flash of an explosion. Russian officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a sign of Western unity, leaders gathered in Brussels for a day of emergency summits of NATO, the G7 and the EU.

"We must ensure that the decision to invade a sovereign independent country is understood to be a strategic failure that carries with it ruinous costs for Putin and Russia," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the EU parliament.

U.S. President Joe Biden, rallying allies on his first trip aboard since the war began, will unveil new sanctions. The first U.S. shipment from a new, $800 million arms package for Ukraine will start flying out in the next day or so, a U.S. defense official said.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance would boost its forces in Eastern Europe by deploying four new battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

Zelenskyy, who will address the NATO and EU summits by video conference, said he expected "serious steps" from Western allies. He repeated his call for a no-fly zone, although Western leaders have rejected this.

The Ukrainian leader, who has won admiration across the West for his leadership under fire, also urged people around the world to take to the streets in support of Ukraine.

"Come from your offices, your homes, your schools and universities, come in the name of peace, come with Ukrainian symbols to support Ukraine, to support freedom, to support life," he said in a video address.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

Tens of thousands of people are still believed to be trapped inside Mariupol under Russian bombardment, having had no access to food, power, water or heat since the war's early days. Satellite photographs from commercial firm Maxar showed massive destruction of what was once a city of 400,000 people, with residential apartment buildings in flames.

Journalists have not been able to report from inside the Ukrainian-held part of Mariupol for 10 days, during which time Ukraine says Russia has bombed a theater and an art school being used as bomb shelters, burying hundreds of people alive.

In the Russian-held part of the city, trucks arrived with food supplies in cardboard boxes bearing the "Z" logo that has become the Russian symbol of its "special operation." Hundreds of people, many elderly, had emerged from the surrounding ruins, queuing in stony silence as men in Russian emergencies ministry uniforms distributed the boxes.

Angelina, a young mother of two, said she had received bread, nappies and baby food.

"It's difficult to leave by bus now. We hope the number of people trying to get out will go down and it will get easier for us to leave," she said.

Ukraine's armed forces chief of staff said on Thursday Russia was still trying to resume offensive operations to capture the cities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol.

To counter troop shortages, Moscow was moving in fresh units close to the Ukraine border and calling up soldiers who had recently served in Syria, it said.

Zelenskyy repeated he was ready to have a face-to-face meeting with Putin to end the war.

"We are ready to discuss the terms of the ceasefire, the terms of peace, but we are not ready for ultimatums," he said.

(Reporting by a Reuters journalist in Mariupol, Natalia Zinets in Lviv, John Chalmers in Brussels and Reuters bureaus; writing by Angus MacSwan; editing by Peter Graff, Jon Boyle and Andrew Heavens.)

]]>

Russia may not stop with Ukraine — NATO looks to its weakest link

Sabine Siebold and Robin Emmott / Reuters — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 14:31:00 GMT

ON BOARD THE SUPPLY SHIP ELBE, Latvia — Hours after Russian missiles first struck Ukrainian cities on Feb. 24, German naval commander Terje Schmitt-Eliassen received notice to sail five warships under his command to the former Soviet Republic of Latvia to help protect the most vulnerable part of NATO's eastern flank.

The hasty dispatch was part of Germany's scramble to send "everything that can swim out to sea," as the navy's top boss phrased it, to defend an area military strategists have long deemed the weakest point for the alliance. The vessels' sudden departure demonstrated how NATO, and Germany, were propelled by Russia's invasion into a new reality and face what officials, diplomats, intelligence officials and security sources agree is the most serious threat to the alliance's collective security since the Cold War.

Schmitt-Eliassen, who is based in the German Baltic port of Kiel, spoke to Reuters on the flight deck of the supply ship Elbe. Moored next to it, within sight of the church towers of the Latvian capital Riga, were a Latvian and a Lithuanian ship, and vessels and sailors from nations including Denmark, Belgium and Estonia were due to join the group later.

A total of 12 NATO warships with some 600 sailors on board are due to start a mine-clearing operation in the coming days.

On Feb. 16, when intelligence showed an invasion was imminent, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the current era a "new normal."

It looks a lot like a return to the past. Founded in 1949 to defend against the Soviet threat, the NATO alliance is facing a return to mechanized warfare, a huge increase in defense spending, and potentially a new Iron Curtain falling across Europe. After struggling to find a new post-Cold War role, countering terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 and a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, NATO is back defending against its original nemesis.

But there's a difference. China, which split with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, has refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a "special military operation." And the old Cold War blueprints no longer work, as NATO has expanded east since the 1990s, bringing in former Soviet states — including the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in 2004.

In early February, China and Russia issued a powerful joint statement rejecting NATO's expansion in Europe and challenging the Western-led international order.

Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could touch off a global conflict.

"We have reached a turning point," said retired German general Hans-Lothar Domroese, who led one of the highest NATO commands in the Dutch town of Brunssum until 2016.

"We have China and Russia acting in concert now, boldly challenging the United States for global leadership ... In the past, we have been saying deterrence works. Now we have to ask ourselves: Is deterrence enough?"

This is underscored by Schmitt-Eliassen's mission — a regular exercise that was brought forward by Russia's invasion.

The issue is access. Before the Soviet Union was dissolved, NATO could have moved to contain the Soviet Union by blocking the western entrance of the Baltic Sea. That would seal in the Soviet Union's Baltic Fleet to prevent it from reaching the North Sea where its warships could attack U.S. supply convoys.

Today, NATO's and Russia's roles have been reversed: An emboldened Moscow could encircle NATO's new Baltic members, and cut them off from the alliance. If a new Iron Curtain is to fall, NATO needs to ensure its members are not behind it.

The three tiny countries, with a combined population of some six million people, have a single overland link to the alliance's main territory. A corridor of some 40 miles is squeezed between the heavily armed Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the west and Belarus on the east.

So Schmitt-Eliassen's goal is to keep the waterway open, as a supply line also for non-NATO states Finland and Sweden. Millions of tons of old mines, ammunition and chemical weapons are believed to lie on the bed of the shallow Baltic Sea, a legacy of two World Wars.

Mines — whether old and unexploded or freshly laid — can have an impact beyond destruction, Schmitt-Eliassen said. A mine sighting, or rumored sighting, can close harbors for days while the area is swept. If that happens in the Baltic, there's a risk "the supermarket shelves will remain empty."

Even commercial ships can become a military factor in the narrow western entrance to the Baltic, he said, referring to scenarios such as the March 2021 incident when the Ever Given container ship blocked traffic through the Suez Canal for days.

"You cannot blame anybody for this (kind of incident), it is not attributable," the chief of the German navy, vice-admiral Jan Christian Kaack, told Reuters.

NEXT TARGET?

Crucial for the Baltics is the land link between Kaliningrad and Belarus. Called the Suwalki Gap, its seizure would cut the Baltic states off.

"Putin could quickly seize the Suwalki Gap," said Domroese, the retired German general, adding this will not happen today or tomorrow, "but it could happen in a few years."

Putin's recent actions have not all been predictable. He put Russia's nuclear forces on high alert on Feb. 28, with rhetoric that Stoltenberg told Reuters is "dangerous, it's reckless."

The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment. Putin says Russia's concerns expressed over three decades about NATO's expansion were dismissed by the West, and post-Soviet Russia was humiliated after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

He says NATO, as an instrument of the United States, was building up its military on Ukraine's territory in a way that threatened Russia.

On March 11, Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin the West was beefing up military forces close to Russia's Western borders. Putin asked Shoigu to prepare a report on how to respond.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelinskyy has warned that the Baltic states will be Russia's next target. The Baltic Sea is a large and busy shipping market for containers and other cargo, connecting Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia with the rest of the world.

It "has gone from being a normal peaceful area, to an area where you tread carefully," said Peter Sand, chief analyst at the air and ocean freight rate benchmarking platform Xeneta. With demand and logistics disrupted, the fees shippers pay to move cargoes from Hamburg to Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad are down 15% since the invasion, according to Xeneta data.

For almost 25 years, the West believed Russia could be tamed by diplomacy and trade to maintain stability and security in Europe. In 1997, NATO and Russia signed a "founding act" that was designed to build trust and limit both sides' force presence in eastern Europe.

The alliance also sought to build a partnership with Russia, which took part in NATO exercises in the Baltic as recently as 2012, according to retired U.S. Admiral James Foggo, who commanded U.S. and NATO fleets in Europe for almost a decade until 2020.

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, NATO created small, multinational combat units in Poland and the three Baltic states, which serve as a forward presence to deter Moscow. But the force numbers are designed not to violate the "founding act," which has hindered NATO's ability to move troops into the Baltics and Poland on a permanent basis.

"We all thought that there wouldn't be an enemy anymore," Admiral Rob Bauer, the chairman of NATO's military committee, told Reuters. "We now are confronted with a nation that is showing that it is aggressive, that it has forces that we thought were not going to be used anymore."

While the numbers are changing all the time, the number of troops under the command of NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Tod Wolters has more than doubled since Russia's invasion, to around 40,000, according to NATO diplomats and officials.

NATO allies have also moved five aircraft carriers into European waters, in Norway and the Mediterranean, increased the number of warplanes in the air in NATO airspace and more than doubled the size of the combat units in the Baltics and Poland. Host nation forces number some 290,000 in the region, but mainly under national control.

GERMANY'S MOMENT

The biggest shift in NATO's "new normal," diplomats, former officials and experts say, is Germany's reversal of a decades-long policy of low defense spending. Held back by guilt over its wartime past and resulting pacifism among its population, Germany resisted pressure from the United States to increase this to a NATO target of 2% of economic output. France and Britain both meet the goal, but Germany's defense spending was only 1.5% in 2021.

With aging equipment and personnel shortages, Berlin had been seen for decades as a weak partner because of its reluctance to send troops to combat operations.

But on Feb. 27, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Berlin would now meet the 2% target — and promised a $110 billion injection into the military.

Germany has been concerned by Moscow's presence in the Baltic Sea for a while. After Russia's annexation of Crimea, Berlin forged an alliance of the western navies on the Baltic Sea.

"We simply had to take note of the fact that — whether we like it or not — we are the 900 pound gorilla in the ring," said navy chief Kaack. "The way we look up to the United States as a smaller partner, that's how our partners here look at us."

Soon after Russia's invasion, Berlin announced it would buy 35 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets from the United States to replace its aging Tornado fleet.

NO MORE CONSTRAINTS

The United States is also moving more military equipment into Europe, including vehicles and weapons to Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland that could be used immediately by newly arriving U.S. troops, rather than waiting weeks for tanks and trucks to be shipped from U.S. bases.

Douglas Lute, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, told Reuters that NATO's "new normal" should be a step up from what the alliance agreed after Crimea. It is likely to be set down in writing in NATO's official master strategy document, known as its "Strategic Concept," which will be agreed at the next NATO summit in Madrid in June.

"You'll see a push forward of combat capability to both reassure eastern allies and to make an even more prominent deterrence message to Russia," Lute said.

He said NATO's existing multinational combat units in the Baltics and Poland — originally some 5,000 troops in total — should be significantly increased in size. He said he expected "more sophisticated air defense systems postured forward," including Patriot and other systems in the Baltics and Poland.

And he expects more U.S. weapons and military equipment to be pre-positioned in Europe. More NATO troops could be stationed in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary.

The U.S. delegation to NATO declined to comment. Its envoy, Julianne Smith, said on March 15 the alliance was making commitments to "have more force posture in Central and Eastern Europe and develop new policy tools."

But — just as in the Cold War — NATO will need to keep communicating with Russia to avoid risking accidents with potentially devastating consequences.

"NATO has some responsibility to do more than just trying to keep Russia out," said Adam Thomson, a former British ambassador to NATO and now director of the European Leadership Network think tank in London. "It's about the management of an unavoidable strategic instability."

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul and Guy Faulconbridge in London; edited by Sara Ledwith.)

]]>

SWIFT international bank system should not be confused with Tammy Swift banking system

Tammy Swift — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 14:30:00 GMT

FARGO — Holy cow.

I’ve been going viral lately.

I haven’t heard my last name this many times since Taylor Swift ran her Suzuki Swift into the back end of a Swift Trucking semi.

My family should have trademarked the Swift name before it became monopolized by the sausage people, the trucking firm or the incredibly famous pop star.

Incidentally, we are supposedly eighth cousins, once removed, to Taylor, which makes the term "distant cousins" even sound like overexaggeration. We also have a link to the sausage-making Swifts. (Heh-heh — see what I did there?) Many years ago, my dad's sisters had spent a lot of time tracing the Swift family tree back hundreds of years.

According to family lore, my gregarious (and apparently fearless) Aunt May decided to pay a visit to the most recent branch of the Swift meatpacking fortune, perhaps figuring they would be as excited to meet their small-town, Midwestern, shirt-tail relatives as Aunt May was to learn we were related to mega-millionaires.

The story goes that the door to their mansion was opened by a patrician-looking woman (who I like to imagine wore a monocle and clutched her pearls while looking like Miss Jane did when she learned the Clampetts had emptied the swimming pool and turned it into a possum rescue.)

Undeterred, Aunt May told her about her genealogy discovery, concluding with a statement that she believed we were distant cousins.

To which the WASP-y Swift responded, in a tone that could instantly freeze hot lava: “That’s highly unlikely,” and slammed the door.

But I digress.

The most famous Swift, as of late, has never parlayed bacon into millions and has never dated Jake Gyllenhaal.

Instead, it's a mere acronym.

Until last week, many of us knew little about the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), a universally accepted messaging system for money transfers, which is used in over 200 countries around the world.

In fact, the last time there was this much interest in any Swift banking system was 1985, when Mom and Dad Swift wondered how I could spend a whole quarter of student-loan money on shaker sweaters, trips to Target and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

As many of you know by now, the idea behind a SWIFT ban on Russia is that banks in the country would not be able to accept funds or make payments outside of Vladland, thus exerting pressure on their ruler to withdraw from Ukraine.

This seems considerably different from the Swift ban of my college years, after which I hypothesized that filling out a check in green ink would take longer for the bank to process, thus ensuring my paycheck would reach the bank before the aforementioned check.

Who knew that this wasn’t reliable advice? It turns out that one really should get banking information from professionals rather than from drunk girls standing next to you in line for the restroom at a Corey Hart concert.

It wasn’t long after the green-ink experiment that my parents suddenly got all NATO on me, informing me that unless I straightened up, they would ban me from using a checkbook, thus leaving me to pay for all essential college supplies — including late-night meals at Ember’s and that Garfield with suction cups — with change found between the seats of my Chevy Citation.

Ultimately, the parental sanctions worked. The good news is that they forced me to get a second job and stop viewing checkbooks as magical “pretend” currency, which could be used to lease unicorns and sublet rainbows in an imaginary world of bottomless checking accounts.

The bad news is that, at about the same time, I discovered credit cards.

I'll bet my monocle-wearing cousins never had such problems.

]]>

UPDATED: Russian artillery pounds Ukraine's Kharkiv as ceasefire talks end with no breakthrough

Reuters — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 12:53:33 GMT

KYIV/MOSCOW -- Russian artillery bombarded residential districts of Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv on Monday, killing possibly dozens of people, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow's invading forces met stiff resistance from Ukrainians on a fifth day of conflict.

The attacks took place while Russian and Ukrainian officials met on the Belarusian border, but their talks made no breakthrough.

Russia also faced deepening isolation and economic turmoil as Western nations, united in condemnation of its assault, hit it with an array of sanctions that rippled around the world. Global shares slid and oil prices jumped.

The United States imposed new sanctions -- on Russia's central bank and other sources of wealth.

And President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a letter formally requesting immediate membership of the European Union for Ukraine -- a request unlikely to shorten the admission process, but an emphatic statement of commitment to Western values.

Zelenskyy also urged the West to consider a no-fly zone for Russian aircraft over Ukraine. In a video address, Zelenskyy said it was time to block Russian missiles, planes and helicopters from Ukraine's airspace.

"Fair negotiations can occur when one side does not hit the other side with rocket artillery at the very moment of negotiations," Zelenskiy said. He did not specify how and by whom a no-fly zone would be enforced.

The United States has ruled out sending troops to fight Russia and officials have voiced concern about further escalating tensions between the world's two biggest nuclear powers.

"A no-fly zone would require implementation," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. Such a move would require "deploying U.S. military to enforce, which would be... potentially a direct conflict, and potentially a war with Russia, which is something we are not planning to be a part of."

Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no sign of reconsidering the invasion he unleashed on Russia's neighbor last Thursday in an attempt to pull it firmly back under Moscow's influence and redraw Europe's security map.

He dismissed the West as an "empire of lies" and replied to the new sanctions with moves to shore up Russia's crumbling rouble currency.

The Russian invasion -- the biggest assault on a European state since World War II -- has failed to make the decisive early gains that Putin would have hoped for. But Kharkiv in Ukraine's northeast has become a major battleground.

Regional administration chief Oleg Synegubov said Russian artillery had pounded residential districts even though no Ukrainian army positions or strategic infrastructure were there. At least 11 people were killed, he said.

"This is happening in the daytime, when people have gone out to the pharmacy, for groceries, or for drinking water. It's a crime," he said.

Earlier Interior Ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said Russian rocket strikes on Kharkiv had killed dozens. It was not possible to verify the casualty figures independently.

Video posted by the military showed thick columns of smoke rising from apartment blocks and flashes of flames.

Moscow's United Nations ambassador, speaking in New York, said the Russian army did not pose a threat to civilians.

Images from the U.S. satellite company Maxar showed a Russian military convoy stretching over 17 miles on the way to Kyiv.

Fighting also occurred throughout Sunday night around the port city of Mariupol, the head of the Donetsk regional administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said. He did not say whether Russian forces had gained or lost ground.

Russian forces seized two small cities in southeastern Ukraine and the area around a nuclear power plant, according to the Interfax news agency, but the capital Kyiv remained under government control.

Explosions were heard in the city before dawn and soldiers set up checkpoints and blocked streets with piles of sandbags and tires as they waited to take on Russian soldiers.

On Kyiv's streets, signboards normally used for traffic alerts showed the message: "Putin lost the war. The whole world is with Ukraine."

Talks on border

Talks between the two sides took place on the border with strong Russian ally Belarus -- a launch pad for invading Russian troops.

Ukraine had said it wanted to secure an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces. The Kremlin declined to comment on its goals.

The meeting ended with officials heading back to capitals for further consultations before a second round of negotiations, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told reporters.

"The Russian side, unfortunately, still has a very biased view of the destructive processes it has launched," Podolyak tweeted.

Russian delegation head Vladimir Medinsky told reporters: "The most important thing is that we agreed to continue negotiating."

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbor's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.

The Western-led response has been emphatic, with sanctions that effectively cut off Moscow's financial institutions from Western markets. The rouble plunged 32% against the dollar on Monday before recouping about half of its losses.

Over the weekend, Western nations announced sanctions including barring some Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system.

Russia's central bank on Monday cranked up its key interest rate to 20% from 9.5% as the rouble dived. Authorities told export-focused companies to be ready to sell foreign currency.

The bank also ordered brokers to block any attempts by foreigners to sell Russian securities. But the global bank HSBC and the world's biggest aircraft leasing firm AerCap joined companies looking for the exit after British oil major BP, the biggest foreign investor in Russia, said on Sunday it would abandon its stake in state oil company Rosneft, writing off up to $25 billion.

In Brussels, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said EU sanctions would have a cost for Europe "but we have to be ready to pay the price, or we will have to pay a much higher price in the future."

The EU will provide intelligence to Ukraine about Russian troop movements and EU countries will increase their military support, he said.

Battle for cities

The Ukrainian military said Russian forces were also focusing on Chernihiv, northeast of Kyiv, and parts of the Donetsk region in the east. Separatists there raised a Russian flag on a local administration building in one shattered village on Sunday.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said at least 102 civilians in Ukraine had been killed since Thursday but the real figure could be "considerably higher."

Ukraine's health ministry said on Sunday 352 civilians, including 14 children, had been killed since the beginning of the invasion.

More than half a million people have fled to neighboring countries, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

Partners in the U.S.-led NATO defense alliance were providing Ukraine with air-defense missiles and anti-tank weapons, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said.

The Kremlin accused the EU of hostile behavior, saying weapons supplies to Ukraine were destabilizing and proved that Russia was right in its efforts to demilitarize its neighbor.

But there was support for Ukraine from unexpected quarters.

The U.S. technology firm Microsoft said it had provided threat intelligence and defensive suggestions to Ukrainian officials about attacks on a range of targets, and also advised the government about attempted cyberthefts of data.

And European soccer's governing body, UEFA, scrapped sponsorship by the Russian state gas giant Gazprom reported to be worth $45 million a season, and UEFA and the global federation FIFA suspended all Russian teams until further notice.

]]>

NATO says Russia still adding troops to Ukraine build-up

Phil Stewart and Sabine Siebold / Reuters — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 14:31:00 GMT

BRUSSELS — NATO accused Russia on Wednesday of sending more troops to a massive military build-up around Ukraine, even as Moscow said that it was withdrawing forces and was open to diplomacy.

At the start of two days of talks among NATO defense ministers, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg appeared unconvinced the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine had lessened, and voiced guarded hopes for diplomacy.

"We have not seen any withdrawal of Russian forces. And of course, that contradicts the message of diplomatic efforts," Soltenberg said. "What we see is that they have increased the number of troops and more troops are on their way. So, so far, no de-escalation."

World powers are engaged in one of the deepest crises in East-West relations for decades, jostling over post-Cold War influence and energy supplies as Moscow wants to stop the former Soviet state from ever joining the NATO military alliance.

NATO has refused to concede that demand from Moscow.

President Joe Biden spelled out the stakes in a televised address on Tuesday, in which he warned that more than 150,000 Russian troops were still massed near Ukraine's borders.

The Russian defense ministry published video that it said showed tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and self-propelled artillery units leaving the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

EASTERN FLANK

Stoltenberg cautioned that Russians have frequently repositioned military equipment and troops during the build-up.

"Movement of forces, of battle tanks, doesn't confirm a real withdrawal," he said.

NATO will consider new steps to deter Russia on its eastern flank on Wednesday.

Allies are also likely to pledge more troops and equipment to NATO members in eastern Europe, following a series of announcements over the past six weeks in response to the Russian threat in Ukraine's north, east and south.

Diplomats said that could involve 4,000 new troops in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia.

Ministers will also consider the alliance's nuclear deterrents, although discussions are highly confidential. Russia has amassed a large stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons.

The latest crisis has galvanized NATO and given the alliance a renewed sense of purpose after the soul-searching that followed last year's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"The escalation of Russian troops at the Ukrainian border is increasing and significant, and implores us as an alliance to continue to work together," Canada's Defence Minister Anita Anand said as she arrived for the meeting.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart, Sabine Siebold and Robint Emmott; editing by Alex Richardson.)

]]>

Russia keeps door open for diplomacy as Ukraine hints at concessions

Darya Korsunskaya and Natalia Zinets / Reuters — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 15:31:00 GMT

MOSCOW/KYIV — Russia suggested on Monday that it was ready to keep talking to the West to try to defuse a security crisis in which it has massed a huge force within striking distance of Ukraine, while a Ukrainian official said Kyiv was prepared to make concessions to Moscow.

In a televised exchange, President Vladimir Putin was shown asking his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, whether there was a chance of an agreement to address Russia's security concerns, or whether it was just being dragged into tortuous negotiations.

Lavrov replied: "We have already warned more than once that we will not allow endless negotiations on questions that demand a solution today."

But he added: "It seems to me that our possibilities are far from exhausted ... At this stage, I would suggest continuing and building them up."

Washington has Russia could invade Ukraine "any day now," and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday called the situation "very, very dangerous."

Russia has positioned more than 100,000 troops near to Ukraine's borders but denies planning to invade, accusing the West of hysteria.

Earlier in the day, the Group of Seven large Western economies (G7) had warned Russia of "massive" economic consequences if it did invade, and promised Kyiv swift support.

Ukraine's ambassador to Britain backtracked on remarks suggesting that Kyiv would reconsider its attempt to join NATO — one of Russia's primary concerns — but did say that other concessions could be on offer.

"We are not a member of NATO right now and to avoid war we are ready for many concessions and that is what we are doing in conversations with the Russians," he told the BBC in a clarification.

"It has nothing to do with NATO, which (membership application) is enshrined in the constitution."

STOCKS SLIDE

The Kremlin said that if Ukraine renounced its aspiration to join the Western military alliance, it would significantly help address Russia's concerns.

Moscow has made clear it sees the former Soviet republic's quest for closer ties with the West, notably through NATO, as a threat.

Eight years ago, mass protests on Kyiv's Maidan square in favor of closer integration with the West forced out the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Faced with the ascendancy of pro-Western politicians promising to advance democracy and fight corruption just across its border, Russia captured and then annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, home to the Russian Black Sea fleet.

It also supported pro-Russian rebels who have seized part of Ukraine's industrial, largely Russian-speaking east in a war that is still adding to its toll of more than 14,000 lives lost.

The G7 finance ministers said fresh military aggression by Russia against Ukraine would trigger "economic and financial sanctions which will have massive and immediate consequences on the Russian economy."

But talk of diplomatic efforts continuing brought the price of crude oil down off the seven-year highs it had hit earlier amid concerns that sanctions would disrupt exports from Russia, a major producer, in an already tight market.

Major European stock markets slumped by between 2.0% and 3.5% before making up some of their losses, as did Russian and Ukrainian bonds.

Sanctions could ultimately rebound on Western powers, which rely heavily on Russia for energy supplies, notably gas, as well as other raw materials.

European banks in particular fear that Russia could be excluded from the SWIFT global payment system, which would prevent the repayment of Russian debts.

The Dutch airline KLM has halted flights to Ukraine and through its airspace, while Germany's Lufthansa said it was considering a suspension, and British Airways flights appeared on Monday to be avoiding Ukrainian airspace.

Ukraine International Airlines, the country's biggest carrier, said insurers had told it they would no longer cover its flights in Ukrainian airspace.

SCHOLZ VISIT

Lavrov told Putin the United States had put forward concrete proposals on reducing military risks, but that responses from NATO and the European Union — which has been at pains not to let Moscow divide its members — had not been satisfactory.

None of my fellow ministers responded to my direct message," Lavrov said. "Therefore we will continue to seek a concrete response from each country."

An EU official, who asked not to be named but has spoken to Putin by phone in the past, said U.S. talks with Russia were yielding little.

"Russia is trying to demonstrate that it is the policeman in the region," the source said. "The criticism by Moscow against Ukraine is this idea that the people made a choice for liberal democracy, values, principles and freedoms."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held talks in Kyiv with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to be followed on Tuesday by a meeting with Putin in Moscow.

He told reporters he saw "no reasonable justification" for Russia's military activity on Ukraine's border, and that Russia should accept offers to discuss European security. He announced a credit of $170 million for Ukraine.

While Zelenskiy affirmed that Ukraine still wanted to join NATO, Scholz said it was strange that Russia had raised the issue now, when it was "not on the agenda."

Kyiv has long resented the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 project — a pipeline that will allow Russia to circumvent Ukraine in exporting gas to Germany — and has bristled at Germany's refusal to join other NATO partners in selling it weapons.

Germany did, however, begin sending troops on Monday to help NATO member Lithuania bolster NATO's border with Russia.

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow; Natalia Zinets in Kyiv; Guy Faulconbridge in London; Thomas Escritt in Berlin; Chen Lin in Singapore; Shreyashi Sanyal, Anisha Sircar and Muviya M in Bengaluru; writing by Kevin Liffey; editing by Andrew Cawthorne, Jon Boyle and Alison Williams.)

]]>