Russia’s top diplomat said Friday that Moscow will not start a war in Ukraine but warned that it wouldn’t allow the West to trample on its security interests, amid fears it is planning to invade its neighbor.
U.S. President Joe Biden warned Ukraine’s leader a day earlier that there is a “distinct possibility” that Russia could take military action against the former Soviet state in February.
“There won’t be a war as far as it depends on the Russian Federation, we don’t want a war,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a live interview with Russian radio stations. “But we won’t let our interests be rudely trampled on and ignored.”
Tensions have soared in recent weeks, and United States and its NATO allies warily eyed a buildup of more than 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine, worrying that Moscow was preparing to attack. Russia has repeatedly denied having any such plans, but has demanded that NATO promise Ukraine will never be allowed to join and that alliance roll back deployments of troops and military equipment in Eastern Europe. The U.S. and NATO formally rejected those demands this week, though Washington outlined areas where discussions are possible, offering hope that there could be a way to avoid war.Russia’s official response to those proposals will come from President Vladimir Putin, but Kremlin has said there was “little ground for optimism.”
Lavrov echoed that grim note Friday.“While they say they won’t change their positions, we won’t change ours,” he said. “I don’t see any room for compromise here.”Putin opened the weekly meeting of his Security Council on Friday, saying only that it would address foreign policy issues.
Later, in a video call with French President Emmanuel Macron, the Kremlin said he emphasized that U.S. and NATO failed to consider Russia’s key demands: precluding NATO’s expansion, stopping the deployment of alliance weapons near Russian borders and rolling back its forces from Eastern Europe. At the same time, Putin spoke in favor of continuing talks about a stalled peace agreement for eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed rebels are fighting Ukrainian forces. Those talks are among Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, and presidential envoys from four countries met in Paris on Wednesday and agreed to have another meeting in Berlin in two weeks.Following 2014 ouster of a Kremlin-friendly president in Kyiv, Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and began backing insurgency in country’s eastern industrial heartland.
Earlier, Lavrov noted that U.S. suggested two sides could talk about limits on deployment of intermediate-range missiles, restrictions on military drills and rules to prevent accidents between warships and aircraft.
He said that Russia proposed discussing those issues years ago — but Washington and its allies never took them up on it until now. While he described U.S. offers as reasonable, he also emphasized that Russia’s main concerns on NATO. He noted that international agreements say that security of one nation must not come at expense of others’ — and that he would send letters to ask his Western counterparts to address that obligation.
“It will be hard for them to wiggle out from answering why they aren’t fulfilling the obligations sealed by their leaders not to strengthen their security at the expense of others,” he said.
As tensions build, Washington warned Moscow of devastating sanctions if it invades Ukraine, including penalties targeting top Russian officials and key economic sectors. Several senior U.S. officials also said Thursday that Germany would not allow a newly constructed pipeline — which is meant to bring gas directly from Russia — to begin operations if Russia invades Ukraine.
Asked about possible sanctions, Lavrov said that Moscow had warned Washington that their introduction would amount to a complete severing of ties.
While Moscow and the West are mulling their next steps, NATO said it was bolstering its deterrence in the Baltic Sea region, and the U.S. ordered 8,500 troops on higher alert for potential deployment to Europe.
Russia has launched a series of military drills involving motorized infantry and artillery units in southwestern Russia, warplanes in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, and dozens of warships in the Black Sea and the Arctic. Russian troops have also headed to Belarus for sweeping joint drills, raising Western fears that Moscow could stage an attack on Ukraine from the north. The Ukrainian capital is just 75 kilometers (50 miles) from the border with Belarus.