Russia and Ukraine are at the center of a crisis in East-West relations in the Europe.
On the one hand, the Ukrainians accuse the Russians of mustering thousands of soldiers for a possible full-scale invasion.
On the other, Russia accuses Ukraine and the U.S of destabilizing behavior, and said it needs security guarantees for its own protection.
On Monday (13), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia may be forced to implement missiles intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) plans to do the same.
Interview with the Russian news agency (RIA), Ryabkov said that Moscow would have to take the step if NATO refused to get involved with it to prevent such a move.
The comments have further heightened stakes in an East-West standoff in which Russia is demanding security guarantees from the West, while the United States and its allies are warning Moscow to back down from what they see as a possible invasion of Ukraine — something that Ryabkov again denied that it was Russia’s intention.
Intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe were banned under a 1987 treaty agreed between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan in what was hailed at the time as a major easing of Cold War tensions.
Washington abandoned the pact in 2019 after complaining for years of alleged Russian violations.
Ryabkov said there were “indirect indications” that NATO was moving closer to redeploying the INF, including its restoration last month of the 56th Artillery Command that operated Pershing missiles with a nuclear capability during the Cold War.
Complete lack of confidence
“The lack of progress towards a political and diplomatic solution to this problem will lead to our response of a military and military technical nature,” he said.
“In other words, it will be a confrontation, this will be the next round, the appearance of such resources on our side. At the moment there are none, we have a unilateral moratorium. We ask that NATO and the US join this moratorium.”
NATO says there will be no new American missiles in Europe and is ready to stop Russian missiles with a response that would involve only conventional weapons…
But Ryabkov said Russia had a “complete lack of confidence” in NATO.
“They don’t allow themselves to do anything that would in any way increase our security — they believe they can act as they need it, which is to their advantage, and we just have to suck it up and deal with it. But that won’t continue.”
the russian president Vladimir Putin and the US president Joe Biden they talked for two hours last week about the Ukraine crisis and Moscow’s demand for what they call Western legally binding security guarantees.
Ryabkov said that the Russia it would present its follow-up proposals to the United States, and possibly other NATO countries as well, in the coming weeks.
Putin’s spokesman, however, said he expected the Russian ideas to be presented this week.
Last week, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, he said at CNN that there will be a “really bloody massacre” if Russia decides to invade Ukraine, and warned that “the Russians will also come back in coffins”.
Reference: CNN Brasil
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