Russia's ultimatum to the West

On 17th December the Russian Federation presented proposed "security" agreements with the USA and with other NATO countries which they - let me put this politely - "encouraged" NATO members to sign.

They claimed that they were asking for assurances that there would be no "further" expansion of NATO but for all practical purposes they were asking that the countries which were members of NATO before 1997 abandon their promises to fourteen countries which have already joined NATO over the past 24  years, because the proposed agreement would required that pre-1997 NATO countries "shall not deploy their armed forces and armaments on the territory of any other European state in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997.”

Is Russia offering a reciprocal withdrawal of it's own forces where they were not in place before 27th May 1997? Of course not.

Official Russian statements about these proposed agreements do not quite amount to threats but their outriders have - for example  the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against NATO targets, was suggested at the Duma (Russian parliament) defence committee by former Deputy Minister of Defense Andrei Kartapolov, who said: “Our partners must understand that the longer they drag out the examination of our proposals and the adoption of real measures to create these guarantees, the greater the likelihood that they will suffer a pre-emptive strike.”

I can recommend two assessments of the Russian ultimatum to the West - this one on the BBC website and this one by Françoise Thom  for the think tank Desk Russie.

I believe there is a lot of sabre rattling going on here: Putin is trying to frighten the West in the hope of making any response to his foreign policy less effective.

Is Russia really likely to make a pre-emptive strike against NATO countries? I hope not, but I also hope the people who would have to defend us against any such strike are working on the assumption that our military defences might need to be able to stop a Russian strike. 

Is it more likely that Putin might be planning fresh provocations, possibly even a full-scale invasion, against Ukraine?

I certainly would not bet my shirt against it. There should be no empty threats made about what the NATO response might be because, whatever we threaten, there must be a significant chance that we will have to implement it.

 



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