NATO Chief Warns of Real Crisis as Talks with Russia over Ukraine Reach Impasse

NAtO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said there is “a real risk for a new armed conflict in Europe” after talks between alliance members and Russia ended with no signs of progress towards defusing the crisis over Ukraine. ”.

The Russian deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, emerged from the four hours of talks renewing Moscow’s threat that it would take military steps if political measures were not enough to "neutralize the threats" it says it faces. His remarks came only days after his fellow Russian diplomat, Sergei Ryabkov, had assured reporters that Russia had no intention of invading Ukraine.

Grushko said he had told NAtO representatives that “further sliding of the situation could lead to the most unpredictable and most severe consequences for European security”.

The Russian deputy defense minister, Alexander Fomin, was quoted as saying that relations with NATO were at a "critically low level," while a foreign ministry official told reporters that there was "no positive agenda at all."

The US delegation leader, the deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, said she had heard nothing in Brussels that differed from the Kremlin position laid out at bilateral talks in Geneva, demanding a guaranteed end to NATO expansion and a withdrawal of alliance troops in formerly Soviet bloc countries that joined the alliance after 1997.

Those proposals remained unacceptable to the US and all NAtO allies, Sherman said. She also pointed out that there were still more than 100,000 Russian troops deployed close to the Ukrainian border, some of which had carried out exercises with live ammunition in recent days.

"We were basically saying to the Russians: some of the things you put on the table are non-starters for us. We are not going to agree that NATO cannot expand any further. We are not going to agree to go back to 1997," she told reporters. "Together, the United States and our NATO allies made clear we will not slam the door shut on NATO’s open-door policy, a policy that has always been central to the NATO alliance."

Stoltenberg called the day’s meeting a "defining moment for European security,” but said "significant differences" remained.

"We had a very serious and direct exchange on the situation in and around Ukraine and the implications for European security," Stoltenberg said. "Our differences will not be easy to bridge, but it is a positive sign that all NATO allies and Russia sat down around the same table and engaged on substantive topics."

But he conceded: “There is a real risk for a new armed conflict in Europe,” and warned that Russia would face “severe consequences” if it used military force.

The NATO-Russia Council meeting will be followed on Thursday in Vienna by a third round of talks with Moscow in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), currently chaired by Poland.