In U.S.-sponsored peace talks this week, Russia returned to hard-line demands that would rewrite the security architecture of Europe by forcing NATO to roll back its troop deployment to where it stood in 1997 — before the alliance began expanding east of Germany.
The demands, laid out in negotiating points drafted by Russia and obtained by The Washington Post, mirror ultimatums the Kremlin issued to NATO and the United States in late 2021 and early 2022 while senior Russian officials insisted, falsely, that they would not invade Ukraine.
In effect, Russia’s demands would mean that the countries that joined NATO after 1997, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the three Baltic nations, could no longer host troops or weapons. The Biden administration and U.S. allies rejected those demands as “non-starters.”
The Russian document, and new comments from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, indicate that as talks peace talks restart for the first time in nine months, Kyiv is coming under growing pressure to surrender Ukrainian territory coveted by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The Americans raised a question: ‘What if Ukraine joins NATO? Would Ukraine withdraw from Donbas?’ This was the first time this had been raised,” Zelensky said in remarks released by his office on Saturday.
The White House has not confirmed raising such a question, and the top U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, have not disclosed details of the talks that were held on Tuesday and Wednesday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, or the results of a follow-up meeting with Putin in Moscow.
Putin and his negotiators, however, have made clear that Russia would never accept Ukraine’s membership in NATO.
Putin is set to meet President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference in Shenzhen, China next week. Putin has long sought to negotiate directly with Trump without Zelensky’s participation.
Russia’s hard-line positions reflect Putin’s long-standing grudge over NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe, which he insists violated a pledge made to the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1990.
To that end, the plan put forward in Abu Dhabi seeks to address what Putin calls the “root causes” of the war, stretching far beyond Ukraine.
In some parts, the new document goes even further than draft security “treaties” that Russia put forward in 2021 just before its invasion.
Previously Russia demanded only the U.S. refrain from deploying nuclear weapons in Europe — thereby removing protection for U.S. allies in the continent. The new proposals include demands that France and Britain also halt “nuclear sharing,” a concept proposed last year by French President Emmanuel Macron as part of Europe’s effort to develop “strategic autonomy” from the U.S.
Russia demanded not only that Ukraine never join NATO, removing the aspiration to do so now enshrined in the Ukrainian constitution, but also that Ukraine be prohibited from participating in the European Union’s collective security defense policy, should it ever become a member of the bloc.
The document goes beyond the 2021 drafts, calling for restrictions on Ukraine’s military, including limits on the number of soldiers and weapons in the Ukrainian armed forces and security services, a halt to all supplies of Western weapons and military equipment to the country, and a ban on foreign troops and military facilities on Ukrainian soil.
The document also demands that NATO not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine as well as other states in Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia, which Russia sees as its sphere of influence. Putin’s long-term goal has been for Moscow to have a bigger say over neighboring nations that once formed the Soviet Union.
Analysts said Russia’s demands were maximalist and predictable.
“Russia’s demands are sweeping but hardly surprising,” said Eric Ciaramella, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Center.
Ciaramella, however, suggested that Western allies should entertain the Russian requests. “Clearly many of the specific points are nonstarters,” he said. “But rather than reject the proposal out of hand, American, European and Ukrainian negotiators would be wise to engage on the points that are workable.”
Ciaramella noted that Russia’s proposals also include mechanisms for de-escalation in the international waters and airspace as well as for arms limitations.
Zelensky in the remarks made public on Saturday said that the U.S. had, for the first time, floated the idea of Ukraine joining NATO in exchange for a withdrawal from parts of the eastern Donbas region that Kyiv still controls, including the fortress belt, as it’s called, of heavily fortified cities that form the backbone of Ukraine’s defenses in the east.
For nearly five years, Russia has tried, and failed, to conquer the fortress belt.
Still, in 2022, Russia claimed to annex Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk, which form Donbas, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions — in violation of international law.
Putin has vowed to keep the parts of these territories that his forces occupy, either by Ukraine’s surrender of them during negotiations or by continued fighting.
The Kremlin’s demands indicate that Witkoff and Kushner, after nearly two years of negotiations, have failed to move Putin away from his core demands, despite the promise of an array of economic sweeteners and an overall warmer tone toward Moscow by the White House.
On Thursday, after meeting Putin in Moscow, Witkoff and Kushner said that European nations would participate in future negotiations — something Putin had long resisted. Russian officials have portrayed the Europeans as an enemy that is prolonging the war by aiding Ukraine.
Zelensky, meanwhile, said Ukraine would not agree to cede its territories and is discussing a package of security guarantees with its partners.
That package should include guarantees from NATO and the E.U., the preservation of a strong Ukrainian army with sufficient troops and weapons, and financial support including to rebuild the country, he said.
Zelensky said that if he received a comprehensive proposal on the question of joining NATO and withdrawing from Donbas that he would put it to a public vote. Polls suggest Ukrainians broadly oppose surrendering land to Russia.
Zelensky also said he believed Moscow was interested in reopening broader questions about European security rather than focusing on ending the brutal full-scale invasion that has killed hundreds of thousands on both sides since February 2022.
“Putin’s desire to change borders in Europe is a fact. I am sure this is part of his concept of revising security guarantees in Europe,” Zelensky said. “This is dangerous because, in my view, it is precisely things like this that lead to wars or escalations.”
In the days leading up to the meetings in Abu Dhabi, Kushner voiced a plan to broaden the peace talks on Ukraine into a larger discussion of regional postwar security. That worried some European leaders who recognized the unmistakable echo of Putin’s demands from 2021.
Some European countries, including France and Britain, sent high-ranking representatives to Abu Dhabi, but they were not part of talks with Russia. Instead, they held consultations with the U.S. and Ukraine.
Pressure mounted this week on European leaders to come up with a representative to engage with the White House and the Kremlin on the continent’s future.
On Friday, the E.U.’s 27 heads of state and government agreed at a meeting in Dublin that they would appoint not only one person to join the talks but a team from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the E.U.
In Dublin, Kushner appeared to reiterate that the U.S. is pushing for the Europeans to have a seat at the table.
“We cannot conclude this deal without the Europeans being at the table,” Kushner said. He said Putin “is willing to give it a try.”
Francesca Ebel in Kyiv contributed to this report.
The post Russia seeks NATO pullback; Zelensky says U.S. asked about ceding territory appeared first on Washington Post.
