The US has presented its written response to Russian demands on Ukraine, but made clear that it did not change Washington’s support for Ukraine’s right to pursue Nato membership, the most contentious issue in relations with Moscow.
The reply, which was delivered to the Russian foreign ministry by the US ambassador in Moscow, John Sullivan, repeats the US offer to negotiate with Russia over some aspects of European security, but the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the issue of eventual Ukrainian membership of the alliance was one of principle.
Blinken was speaking hours after his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, threatened “retaliatory measures” if the US response did not satisfy the Kremlin.
“Without going to the specifics of the document, I can tell you that it reiterates what we said publicly for many weeks, and in a sense for many, many years. That we will uphold the principle of Nato’s open door,” Blinken said, adding: “There is no change. There will be no change.”
He said the US document would not be made public because “we think diplomacy has the best chance to succeed if we provide space for confidential talks”.
Nato delivered its own response to Moscow on Wednesday and Blinken insisted there was “no daylight” between their positions.
The Biden administration delivered its message to Moscow as Ukrainian and Russian representatives were meeting in Paris, together with French and German officials, in the latest diplomatic effort to slow the momentum towards a new war in Europe.The talks brought together the Kremlin’s top official on Ukraine, Dmitry Kozak, and Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, amid low expectations that they could do anything to close the gap between Nato and Russia.
Moscow wants assurances that Ukraine and Georgia will never be allowed to join Nato and has called for a pullout of Nato forces from eastern Europe, including Romania and Bulgaria, and a return to 1997 levels of deployment.
Blinken repeated the US and Nato position that they would not recognise any limitation on the right of Ukraine to pursue membership of the alliance.
“These are decisions for Nato nations as an alliance, not the United States unilaterally, but from our perspective, I can’t be more clear: Nato’s door is open, and remains open,” he said.
The secretary of state said the US written response laid out areas in which the US was ready to negotiate, which have been raised in earlier talks . They include measures to improve mutual transparency over military operations, limiting military exercises and missile deployments in Europe and a new arms control treaty that would further limit the nuclear arsenals of the two countries.
Briefing the Duma, Russia’s parliament, earlier in the day, Lavrov said that he and other top officials would brief Vladimir Putin on the next steps after receiving the US document.
“If the west continues its aggressive course, Moscow will take the necessary retaliatory measures,” Lavrov warned. “We won’t allow our proposals to be drowned in endless discussions.”
US officials believe Moscow could use Washington’s formal reply as a pretext to step up final military preparations. The US deputy security of state, Wendy Sherman, repeated a US warning that a Russian assault could start in the next few weeks but said Putin might wait until after his attendance at the Winter Olympics in China.
“I have no idea whether he’s made the ultimate decision but we certainly see every indication that he is going to use military force some time [between] now and middle of February,” Sherman said in an online discussion with the former Estonian president Kersti Kaljulaid.
“We all are aware that the Beijing Olympics are beginning on February 4th, the opening ceremony, and President Putin expects to be there. I think that probably President Xi Jinping would not be ecstatic if Putin chose that moment to invade Ukraine. So that may affect his timing and his thinking.”
The White House has placed 8,500 troops on heightened alert to deploy to Nato countries in eastern Europe if necessary, and has stepped up arms supplies to Ukraine, alongside the UK and Baltic nations.
On Tuesday Biden said he would consider personal sanctions against Putin if Russia further invaded Ukraine, as well as “enormous consequences” that would damage the Russian economy.
The four-nation talks in Paris are being held under the Normandy format, a forum set up after Russia kickstarted a separatist conflict in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Previous rounds of Normandy format talks have made little progress. Moscow was not ready to include the EU and OSCE in negotiations, Lavrov said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and Olaf Scholz, the new German chancellor, met in Berlin to coordinate their stances after reports of rifts among the allies.
Macron said he was due to speak by phone with Putin on Friday to “clarify” the Russian position. He said France and Germany would never abandon dialogue with Russia, but added: “If there is aggression, there will be retaliation and the cost will be very high.”
Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, said he wanted Germany to go further on potential sanctions against Russia, as he travelled to Berlin for a bilateral this afternoon with Christine Lambrecht. “What we want from Germany, as the biggest economy in Europe, is a stronger signal on sanctions.” The UK is also sharing intelligence with the Netherlands and Germany on the Russian force buildup and plots to unseat the government in Kyiv.
Since the autumn Russia has assembled a potential invasion force of more than 100,000 troops on the Ukraine border. It held military drills on Wednesday and moved soldiers and fighter jets to Belarus before exercises next month, within striking distance of Kyiv.
Interfax news agency quoted the Russian defence ministry as saying it had deployed a paratrooper unit to Belarus as well as Su-35 fighter jets as part of the Allied Resolve exercises.
Separately, Russian artillery forces in their country’s southern Rostov region, which borders Ukraine, were to practise firing later on Wednesday as part of a combat readiness inspection of the southern military district, the defence ministry said.
In the far north, Russian warships entered the Barents Sea to practice protecting a major shipping lane in the Arctic, the Northern Fleet said. Moscow announced sweeping naval exercises last week.
Talks earlier this month between Russia and the US, Nato and OSCE ended without significant agreement. Moscow has threatened “military-technical” measures if the west fails to make concessions.
On Wednesday, the head of Russia’s ruling United Russia party in the Duma said that lawmakers would appeal to the Kremlin to send arms to the Russian-backed separatists in east Ukraine in a gesture that appeared designed to mirror western support for Kyiv.
Moscow is widely understood to have already armed, financed, and provided direct military support to the separatist forces for the last eight years but has officially denied any role in the conflict.
It was not clear what weapons could be delivered to east Ukraine or whether the Kremlin would accept the proposal.
Ukrainian leaders have called for calm, with the defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, telling parliament on Tuesday that an invasion was not imminent. He said the Russians had yet to form a combat battle group of the sort it would need, and “as of today, there are no grounds to believe” Russia would invade imminently.
“Don’t worry, sleep well,” he said. “No need to have your bags packed.”
Additional reporting by Dan Sabbagh and Andrew Roth