Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO, the post-World War II alliance forged between a victorious America and the conflict-battered countries of Western Europe, has often been dubbed a Cold War relic. 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s favorite adjective for NATO on the campaign trial was “obsolete.” Two years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron declared the organization “brain-dead.” NATO was mocked by other critics as an alliance in search of a mission — ridicule fanned by Western alliance officials forever churning out strategic concept papers seeking to define the alliance’s post-Cold War purpose. 

No explanation now seems necessary about NATO’s mission, thanks to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who appears to have handed Western powers the opportunity to revive the Western alliance, according to Ian Bremmer, an American political scientist and founder of the Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm. 

“Putin single-handedly strengthening NATO,” Bremmer tweeted on the announcement that alliance members are placing more forces on standby and reinforcing Eastern European countries with more ships and warplanes in response to Russia’s military build-up on Ukraine’s borders in what historians say is the biggest deployment of forces since 1945. 

“So far, the primary geopolitical impact of Russian escalation of the Ukraine conflict has been to strengthen NATO,” he added. If one of Putin’s aims with the military build-up is to weaken the Western military alliance, it appears to be backfiring, Bremmer and others say. 

Transatlantic differences had long dogged NATO.  

“One can trace these differences back to the U.S. decision under President George W. Bush to invade Iraq, continued under President Barack Obama’s ‘nation-building at home’ and ‘pivot to Asia,’ and deepened under President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies,” noted Kurt Volker, a former American envoy to NATO, a year ago in a commentary entitled “Reviving NATO Won’t Be Easy.” 

On Russia, China and defense spending, the “United States and European allies have major, deeply embedded substantive interests and in some cases serious differences. Bridging them indeed requires a better tone. But it will also take Europe to adopt a more global and strategic approach than it has in recent years, or it will disappoint the Biden administration just as much as it did its predecessors,” Volker warned. 

What a difference a crisis makes! Despite disagreements over the tactics employed to deter Putin from any further military incursions into Ukraine — something Russian officials deny is being considered — many long-time NATO-watchers have praised Washington for what they say is a good job in keeping NATO allies united overall in response to Russia’s threats against Ukraine. 

Bremmer suspects this may have surprised the Russian leader.  

“Surely not what Putin expected given U.S. unilateralism in the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle,” he said, a reference to the Biden administration’s decision last year to exit Afghanistan in what some NATO allies considered a badly planned and premature evacuation. 

Like others, he thinks Putin may have reckoned there would be far more NATO divisions than have emerged so far, given not only lingering European frustrations over the Afghan withdrawal but also the retirement of the experienced Angela Merkel from German politics and French President Macron’s unpredictability and advocacy of a European Union-based defense alliance to supersede NATO. 

Benjamin Haddad, senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, a research group in New York, told VOA recently, “Putin may think this is the right moment to act, with Germany going through a political transition and with France heading toward an election.” He added, “But I do think that would be a miscalculation.” 

Haddad has maintained since the beginning of the year that Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will “want to show to the Biden administration that Germany can be a good transatlantic partner,” despite serious splits within his governing coalition and his own Social Democrat Party. 

Last month some NATO members identified Germany as the weak link in the alliance, criticizing it for appearing not to share the same sense of urgency about Russian military threats displayed by the United States and neighboring European nations. 

There remain frustrations with Germany over its refusal to send lethal weapons to Ukraine, and to block others from supplying Kyiv with German-made military equipment. And Scholz, who is trying to balance his country’s membership in the Western alliance with its close ties to Russia, is still being criticized for his ambiguity over whether Berlin is prepared in the event of war to cancel the just-completed Nord Stream 2 under-sea pipeline, which will pump natural gas from Russia to Germany. 

But some NATO and EU officials say Scholz is increasingly being forced into line with the U.S. and other NATO countries because of Moscow’s increasingly bellicose language and aggressive behavior. 

Ursula von der Leyen, who is the European Commission president and a former German defense minister, underlined Thursday that Nord Stream 2 would have to be sanctioned if Russia invades. 

“Nord Stream 2 cannot be excluded from the sanctions list, that is very clear,” Von der Leyen said in an interview with the Handelsblatt and Les Echos newspapers. The commission president said the future of the pipeline, which is yet to receive regulatory approval in Berlin or Brussels, would depend “on Russia’s behavior.” 

On the core issues, NATO leaders are of one mind — they have stayed united in rejecting as non-starters the Russian demand that there be no further enlargement of the Western alliance, and they have all flatly refused to roll back the alliance’s military presence in the former Soviet satellite states of Central Europe. 

And they have all warned of severe consequences if the Kremlin decides to mount another attack on Ukraine in a repeat of 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and used armed proxies to seize a large part of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, bordering Russia. 

Russia’s military build-up has also revived talk in Finland and Sweden of joining NATO. 

Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, this year, reiterated his country’s right to join NATO if it decides to, a flat rejection of the Russian demand that NATO admit no new members. In a New Year address, the Finnish leader said, “Finland’s room to maneuver and freedom of choice also include the possibility of military alignment and of applying for NATO membership, should we ourselves so decide.” 

Former American diplomat Daniel Fried, who served as assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs and is a former ambassador to Poland, says while the instincts of European NATO members is one of alarm, he’s not getting the impression that the Europeans will cut and run and give Putin his way.  

“I’m just not getting that sense,” he said. 

“There would be a bigger impact if all NATO countries sent equipment to Ukraine, but it’s not that unusual for some member countries to do some things and others not,” said David Kramer, who was an assistant secretary of State in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. “There have been a number of NATO operations in which not all member states participated,” he added. 

Hans Kundnani, a director at Britain’s Chatham House, said, “It’s not necessarily a problem to have different parts of the coalition, as it were, different heads of government, trying different approaches to Russia. It’s not necessarily a problem if they’re coordinated.” 

 
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The White House dismissed a Friday meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in which the leaders unveiled a strategic alliance geared against the U.S.  

“What we have control over is our own relationships and the protection of our own values and also looking for ways to work with countries even where we disagree,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during her briefing.  

In the meeting, Xi endorsed Putin’s demands to end NATO expansion and get security guarantees from the West, issues that have led to Russia’s standoff with the United States and its allies over Ukraine. Meanwhile Moscow voiced its support for Beijing’s stance that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.   

The two leaders met at Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse Friday afternoon, according to China’s state broadcaster CCTV, hours before the beginning of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which diplomats from the U.S., Britain and other countries are boycotting over human rights abuses.  

The broadcaster did not provide details of the meeting, but Xi and Putin, both of whom have been criticized by the U.S. for their foreign and domestic policies, issued a joint statement underscoring their displeasure with “interference in the internal affairs” of other countries.  

The joint statement proclaimed a new China-Russia strategic “friendship” that “has no limits” and no “forbidden areas of cooperation.”  

Stacie Goddard, the Mildred Lane Kemper Professor of Political Science who teaches great power rivalries at Wellesley College, says the move is designed to counter Washington’s narrative that Moscow and Beijing are acting aggressively on Ukraine and Taiwan, by claiming that it is the U.S. that is interfering in their spheres of influence.  

“What they’re saying is that the United States is attempting to change the status quo,” Goddard told VOA. “They’re portraying themselves in many ways as standing up to a revisionist and aggressive United States.”   

Goddard added that in the past Beijing has been reluctant to appear to be acting directly in concert with Russia. “This is really a step towards making it clear, they are acting together,” she added.  

Escalating conflict 

China’s expressions of support for Russia comes as Moscow’s dispute with Ukraine threatens to escalate into armed conflict.     

On Thursday, a senior Biden administration official said the U.S. has information indicating that Russia has developed a plan to stage a false Ukrainian military attack on Russian territory and leverage it as a pretext for an attack against Ukraine.    

Fabricating a video of such an attack is one of several options the Kremlin is formulating to give it an excuse to invade Ukraine, the official said.   

“The video will be released to underscore a threat to Russia’s security and to underpin military operations,” said the official, who requested anonymity.   

“This video, if released, could provide Putin the spark he needs to initiate and justify military operations against Ukraine,” the official added.   

The official said the Biden administration is disclosing specifics about Russia’s alleged plans to “dissuade” Russia from carrying out such plans.    

In an interview Thursday with MSNBC, U.S. deputy national security adviser Jonathan Finer said, “We don’t know definitively that this is the route they are going to take, but we know that this is an option under consideration.”  

NATO welcomes more US troops  

The Biden administration disclosed the intelligence after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday welcomed U.S. plans to deploy more troops to Europe and said NATO is considering sending additional battle groups to the southeastern part of its alliance amid tensions along the Russia-Ukraine border.    

The U.S. on Wednesday announced plans to dispatching 2,000 more troops to Europe, most of them to Poland, and move 1,000 troops from Germany to Romania to bolster NATO’s eastern flank countries.           

Stoltenberg told reporters that while NATO is preparing for the possibility that Russia may take military action, NATO remains ready to engage in “meaningful dialogue” and find a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.  

 ”NATO continues to call on Russia to de-escalate. Any further Russian aggression would have severe consequences and carry a heavy price,” he said.     

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday that the U.S. deployment is heightening tensions in the region.  

The United States and other Western allies have been preparing economic sanctions to level against Russia in hopes of persuading Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull back the more than 100,000 troops Russia has near the border with Ukraine. Russia has denied it plans to invade.     

Stoltenberg said Thursday there has been a “significant movement of Russian military forces into Belarus,” Ukraine’s northern neighbor, where they are taking part in joint military drills that began Thursday instead of later this month as originally planned.   

 ”This is the biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War,” Stoltenberg said, referring to what he said were 30,000 troops, fighter jets and missile systems.     

Russia has not disclosed how many troops or the amount of military hardware it has in Belarus.    

Thursday’s exercises, which are expected to continue until February 20, involved live fire, according to images released by the Belarusian defense minister. They also showed fighter jets in the sky and tanks firing and maneuvering.  

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu witnessed the exercises after arriving in Minsk Thursday, and he also met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.   

Russia has demanded that NATO pull back troops and weapons deployed in eastern European member countries, and to make clear that Ukraine cannot join the 30-member military alliance.  

 NATO and Ukraine have rejected those demands, saying countries are free to pick their allies.     

But Stoltenberg said Thursday that NATO is ready to talk to Russia about relations between the two sides, and about risk reduction, increased transparency and arms control.     

EU plans united response   

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday the 27-nation bloc is planning a response to letters Russia sent earlier this week to several EU members about its demand for security guarantees.  

During a visit to Helsinki, von der Leyen told reporters, “We are united in the European Union and therefore it is clear that the response will mirror, will reflect that unity.”  

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Thursday he welcomed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s offer to mediate the crisis and to host peace negotiations. Zelenskiy’s comments came after the two leaders signed a free trade deal and other agreements while meeting in Kyiv.     

Erdogan previously suggested Turkey, a NATO member that also has good relations with Russia, could act as a mediator.   

Erdogan’s visit to Ukraine is the latest in a series of visits to Kyiv by world leaders and diplomats to show support for Ukraine and try to advance a peaceful resolution to the crisis.   

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.  

 
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Norway’s central bank, Norges Bank, announced Friday it has appointed NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to take over as its next governor after his term leading the military alliance ends later this year.

The central bank announced the appointment in a statement on its website, saying Stoltenberg had been appointed by Norway’s King Harald V. 

Stoltenberg will take over from current Norges Bank Governor Øystein Olsen, who is retiring later this month after holding the position since Jan. 1, 2011.

The 62-year-old Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, also served as finance minister from 1996 to 2000. He had previously said if he got the central bank governor position, he wouldn’t be able to start before leaving his NATO job on Oct. 1.

The central bank statement said it hopes Stoltenberg can start in his new role by Dec. 1. Until then, Norges Bank Deputy Governor Ida Wolden Bache will run the bank in an interim capacity beginning March 1.

In a statement, Norway’s current finance minister, Trygve Slagsvold, said he had been “concerned with identifying the best central bank governor for Norway, and I’m convinced that this is Jens Stoltenberg.”

The appointment ends speculation that Stoltenberg would stay on at NATO, and the search for a successor must now begin ahead of a meeting of member nation leaders in June this year.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

 
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Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter Freedom, an 11-year National Basketball Association (NBA) veteran, is known for his activism both on and off the court. A devout Muslim, he’s a prominent critic of the government of his native Turkey and the Chinese Communist Party. Turkey revoked his passport in 2017 and jailed his father, who was released in 2020. On Chinese search engines the 6-foot-10-inch basketball player’s name brings up no results since he began opposing Beijing’s alleged mistreatment of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority, in Xinjiang.  China denies the allegations of human rights violations, but Kanter comes up as “player No. 13” in searches for the Celtics scoring table.

VOA Mandarin spoke with the Swiss-born, Turkish-raised NBA player last month in Boston. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q: Mr. Freedom, you have a unique last name. What does it mean to you, since it’s your name of choice and not from your parents?

A: I remember my first time coming to America in 2009, I came here to play basketball and go to school at the same time. I remember we were in the locker room and one of my teammates criticized the president of America. And I was very scared for him because I thought that he was going to be thrown in jail.

I even asked him … ‘Hey, you know … aren’t you scared?’ He turned around and laughed and said, ‘This is not Turkey.’ And he tried to explain to me a little bit about what freedom of speech means. I was still very shocked and amazed at the same time, and I researched, and I found out that not every country in the world is like Turkey.

And that’s why I wanted to make that word part of me and carry it everywhere I go. I also want all the young kids out there, NBA fans, sports fans out there, to just research about what freedom means and (that’s) why I chose that last name. 

Q: Recently former NBA star Yao Ming invited you to visit China. You accepted his invitation and invited him to visit labor camps with you. Do you think that Yao Ming will come along,  and will (Chinese President) Xi Jinping give you a visa?

A: I really wanted to go, and I wanted to go see. But I told him, ‘I don’t want propaganda. I don’t want a luxury tour of China. I want to see the real China and show the whole world what’s going on over there.’ I said that if I’m coming to China, let’s go visit (Uyghur) labor camps in Xinjiang, let’s go visit Tibet together. Let’s go visit Hong Kong. And after that, we can fly to Taiwan and see what democracy means.

And obviously, after I posted that video, I was very shocked that he (Yao Ming) blocked me on Instagram. I even put a tweet out and said, ‘That’s what the little kids do.’ I think what I will say to Yao Ming is: ‘Stop being a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party. Stop being a mouthpiece of Communist Party and Xi Jinping, if you want to have a real conversation, you know where I live. Just come here and we can have a conversation.’

Q: When people search Enes Kanter Freedom using Chinese search engines, there’re no results. It’s as if you don’t exist. What is your response to that?

A: Well, I’m actually kind of used to this. You know in Turkey, they ban my Twitter account, they censor all my basketball games in the whole country, and they censor my name because they’re scared. They know that I’m exposing them. And now when I saw that the Chinese government is doing the same thing, it actually gave me extra motivation because I know whatever I’m doing is right. Whatever I’m doing is really scaring them.

Q: Does being outspoken on human rights issues make any difference in your life as an NBA star? Have you faced pressure from (Celtics) management, the league, or the sponsors?

A: I remember the first time I put my ‘Free Tibet’ shoes on my feet. There were two gentlemen from the NBA and they came to me on the bench right before the game, and told me that ‘We are begging you take those shoes off.’ And I asked, ‘Am I breaking any rules?’ They said no. Then I told them, ‘Go tell your boss, whoever it is, (NBA Commissioner) Adam Silver, the Celtics owner, and whoever you’re talking to, I’m not taking my shoes off. I don’t care if I get banned or if I get fined.’  And they said OK.

That game was right before my citizenship test, and I was getting ready for it. There are 27 amendments, and my First Amendment (right) is freedom of speech. I didn’t want them to take that away from me.

Q:  Being a basketball player and an activist at the same time, does it get a little bit overwhelming sometimes?

A: It could get overwhelming, yes. But at the end of the day knowing that you’re doing this for innocent people will always give you extra hope and motivation. Everyone thinks I’m a basketball player. Yes, I am a basketball player, but I think what I’m doing is bigger than basketball.

I want to make this very clear: I don’t do politics. Some people say that: stay away from politics, focus on basketball.  But there’s a big difference between politics and human rights.

I never said vote for this guy, don’t vote for this guy. I always say we need to free political prisoners, we need to have human rights, we need to have freedom of speech, we need to bring awareness to countries like Taiwan or Ukraine. So I feel like this is bigger than basketball.  

 
…

A senior U.S. delegation visited Lithuania this week in a show of support for the Baltic state in its growing dispute with China involving Taiwan.

Beijing effectively blocked imports of Lithuanian goods last month after Taiwan was allowed to open a representative office in the capital, Vilnius. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory. The dispute has rapidly escalated into a trade tussle between the West and Beijing.

Jose W. Fernandez, undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, met Lithuanian government ministers in a visit described by the U.S. State Department as showing “continuing strong support for Lithuania in the face of political pressure and economic coercion from the People’s Republic of China.” The two sides discussed the implementation of a $600 million agreement on boosting trade.

Lithuania welcomed the intervention. “We permanently feel U.S. strong political and practical support in our dispute with China over its systemic violations of international trade rules,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press release.

Taiwan

The dispute began in 2020 when Lithuania’s new government pledged to support what it called “freedom fighters” in Taiwan and criticized Beijing’s human rights record in Hong Kong and Tibet.

In May 2021, Lithuanian lawmakers approved a resolution that described China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority as “genocide.” China has rejected such accusations.

In November of last year, Taiwan officially opened the representative office in Vilnius. Its director, Eric Huang, said the goal was the “strengthening of [the] bilateral relationship comprehensively between Taiwan and Lithuania.”

Lithuania said the opening did not affect its policy toward China or imply any official recognition of Taiwan as independent from Beijing. The move, however, stoked fury in Beijing.

“From the perspective of Beijing, it’s crossing a line, a real red line on how they approach Taiwan. And this is what led later to Beijing downgrading its embassy in Lithuania,” Grzegorz Stec of the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies said in a recent interview with VOA.

Import blockade

In December, China effectively blocked Lithuanian imports by delisting it as a country of origin, meaning goods can’t clear Chinese customs, while pressing multinational businesses to sever ties with the Baltic country.

“And that works not only in some cases for goods that are produced in Lithuania but also goods that include in their supply chain components produced in Lithuania. Also, the European exports that have been transited through Lithuanian ports, they have also been affected,” Stec said.

EU challenge

The European Union accuses China of threatening the integrity of its single market and has launched a challenge at the World Trade Organization.

“We are stepping forward to defend the EU’s rights,” EU Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters January 27.

“Since December 1, Chinese customs are banning Lithuanian imports from the Chinese market. … Chinese companies are canceling orders from Lithuania. China is also cutting its exports to Lithuania. Moreover, China is putting pressure on international companies to abandon the use of Lithuanian components in their production,” Dombrovskis said.

It likely will take years for the WTO challenge to be resolved. In the meantime, the EU is working on legal instruments to counter coercive practices.

“This could include really targeting or restricting access for companies from a specific country from the single market. Right now, we don’t really have a clear instrument for doing that,” Stec told VOA.

Lithuanian lifeline

The Taiwan government has offered Lithuania a $1 billion credit program and a separate $200 million fund to boost trade. Lithuania has donated hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan.

The United States has also stepped in to make up the shortfall caused by China’s blockade. The U.S. Export-Import Bank signed a $600 million export credit agreement with Lithuania, focusing on manufacturing, business services and renewable energy.

But it’s not just about money, Stec said. “Symbolic involvement [by the U.S.] of course supports Lithuania by showing that it’s not isolated in its moves. At the same time, it also makes it harder to unravel the situation because it once again puts it in the spotlight.”

U.S. officials also held talks in Brussels on joint measures to tackle economic coercion.

‘Betrayal’

China, meanwhile, accuses Lithuania of “betrayal.”

“The issue between China and Lithuania is a bilateral issue between China and Lithuania, not between China and Europe. We urge Lithuania to correct its mistakes immediately, and not act as a pawn of Taiwan independence separatist and anti-China forces. We also remind the EU to distinguish right from wrong and be alert to Lithuania’s attempts to hijack China-EU relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters January 27.
…

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet Friday ahead of the opening ceremony for the 2022 Beijing Olympics, in what is expected to be a show of unity amid each country’s increasingly fraught relationship with the United States.

Though Russia and China do not share a formal alliance, both countries have drawn closer in recent years as they work to counter U.S. influence.

China has been more vocal in supporting Russia, even as Moscow masses more than 100,000 troops along the border with Ukraine, raising fears of a conflict. Russia has demanded Ukraine not join NATO and wants the military alliance to pull back troops from Eastern Europe.

Analysts say Russia-China cooperation could make it harder for the United States to punish Moscow in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

An increase in U.S.-Russia hostilities could also divert the attention of U.S. President Joe Biden, who has identified China as his biggest foreign policy priority.

However, China may not welcome any major foreign policy distractions, either.

Beijing on Friday will host the opening ceremony for what will be more than two weeks of Olympic events. Perhaps even more importantly, Xi is in the midst of a crucially important season of domestic political maneuvering meant to shape what is expected to be his indefinite rule over China.

“Beijing wants stability and predictability. They will not welcome foreign turbulence,” said Ryan Hass, a China scholar at the U.S.-based Brookings Institution, in a thread on Twitter.

Xi and Putin, two strongman leaders who preside over authoritarian governments, have a long history. This will be the 38th meeting between the two men, according to Beijing.

In December, Xi said he welcomed the visit by Putin, whom he called his “old friend.” Putin was the first international leader to RSVP for the Beijing Olympics, after the United States announced a diplomatic boycott of the Games over China’s abuses against Uyghur Muslims.

In a letter published earlier this week in China’s official Xinhua news agency, Putin slammed the U.S.-led boycott, lamenting “attempts by a number of countries to politicize sports for their selfish interests.” Putin’s letter also declared that the Russia-China partnership had entered a “new era.”

Russia and China have a long history of working together to block U.S. positions at the United Nations Security Council, where all three are veto-wielding permanent members.

Most recently, China and Russia have found common ground over Ukraine. A recent statement by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs referred to Russia’s “legitimate security concerns” and called for an end to “Cold War mentality,” a clear reference to what it sees as U.S. foreign policy.

“The Chinese have moved progressively closer to Russian positions,” said Evan Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

This is a major shift from China. During Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and its invasion of Crimea in 2014, China was “not leaning so far in toward their partnership with Russia,” Feigenbaum said, speaking at an online forum.

“The China-Russia partnership looks a lot different to an American not just defense planner but strategic thinker than it would have just six or seven years ago,” he said.

However, China has also called for a lowering of tensions over Ukraine and proposed the implementation of the Minsk agreement, a 2014-15 deal to restore peace following a flare-up of violence along the Russia-Ukraine border.

“China is in a diplomatic logjam,” Hass said. “It would face difficulties and unwelcome turbulence from a conflict in Ukraine, but at the same time it wants to preserve strong relations with Russia and it does not want to do the U.S. any favors.”  
…

With tensions between Russia and Ukraine ratcheting up, some former diplomats and Kremlin watchers are debating the effectiveness of any sanctions imposed on Moscow should it invade its neighbor to the west.  

Britain’s former ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, has long doubted the efficacy of sanctions, saying they “don’t work on Russia.”  

Brenton has argued “Russia just becomes even more obdurate.” And some critics of sanctions say Russia has been readying itself to withstand more Western penalties — from cutting back using dollars to boosting foreign currency reserves and trimming budgets. Russia has a current account surplus of seven percent of GDP and $638 billion in foreign reserves. 

Russian business has also become adept at import substitution and its major banks are well-funded, they say. 

Others think sanctions can work if they are sufficiently ruthless, adding that the Kremlin needs to be left in no doubt how biting they will be this time around. 

U.S. President Joe Biden and European leaders hope that by raising the price of war for Russia, President Vladimir Putin will be deterred, and they have maintained a steady drumbeat of warnings in recent weeks, saying a further Russian invasion of Ukraine will trigger the harshest economic sanctions ever seen. 

New sanctions would also target Russian companies and oligarchs close to the Russian president, Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned this week. 

“The individuals we have identified are in or near the inner circles of the Kremlin and play a role in government decision making or are at a minimum, complicit in the Kremlin’s destabilizing behavior,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington. 

Russian officials have been dismissive of the warnings. “It’s not often you see or hear such direct threats to attack business,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said at a news conference this week in the Russian capital. 

And Peskov promised a significant response that would hurt Western businesses if Russia is sanctioned again. “An attack by a given country on Russian business implies retaliatory measures, and these measures will be formulated based on our interests, if necessary,” he added. 

The diplomatic exchanges over sanctions come amid escalating tensions over Russia’s troop buildup on the border with Ukraine. Russia’s troop presence marks the biggest military buildup Europe has seen since the end of the Cold War. 

The United States accuses Russia of preparing an invasion, which Moscow has repeatedly denied, accusing Western powers of causing alarm. 

There has long been a debate about the effectiveness of sanctions, including among some who were in Biden’s inner foreign policy circle before joining the administration. 

Victoria Nuland, now a top official at the State Department, questioned more than a year ago whether sanctions actually work and argued their use against Moscow needed to be rethought. In Foreign Affairs magazine, she wrote, “U.S. and allied sanctions, although initially painful, have grown leaky or impotent with overuse and no longer impress the Kremlin.” 

U.S. officials last year said Biden intended to review the sanctions already imposed on Russia. Some officials say the aim is to readjust the sanctions to increase their immediate impact, as part of an effort to fashion a more rounded and consistent Western strategy toward Russia — one that aligns military, economic, energy, diplomatic and communications policies. Whether an actual review ever took place or whether events overtook a review is not clear. 

Kremlin officials have long downplayed the impact of the Western sanctions that began to be imposed in retaliation for Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, apparently hoping to persuade Western governments to abandon them on the grounds that they don’t work. 

Aside from sanctions for the Crimea annexation and seizure of part of Ukraine’s Donbass region, Western governments have implemented penalties in response to malicious cyber activities they blame on the Kremlin. Sanctions also have been imposed for alleged human rights abuses and for the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Britain of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter. 

Some sanctions have been broad economic ones. Others have targeted individuals. 

Part of Moscow’s line has been that sanctions are hurting Western countries more than Russia, a position often echoed and amplified by business interests in the West. While the Kremlin has downplayed the significance of the penalties, it also has railed against them and maintained that they should be lifted, saying they amount to “interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.” 

That may suggest sanctions have been more troublesome for Russia than the Kremlin is willing to admit, according to David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state in the administration of President George W. Bush. “If you look at all the efforts and time and energy the Kremlin has spent on trying to get sanctions lifted, then that would indicate that the Russians feel they have had an impact,” he told VOA recently. 

Kramer suspects Russia might have been tempted to encroach further into Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 had the West not imposed sanctions. This time round, though, he’s worried that the sanctions being contemplated won’t in the end be tough enough. 

“I am worried that there is not complete agreement on the range of sanctions,” he told VOA. “It’s difficult to get agreement among 27 EU member states, and that’s why, while U.S.-EU unity is preferable, it’s sometimes necessary for the U.S., possibly with the UK and Canada, to go ahead on its own rather than settle for the lowest common denominator,” he said. 

“U.S. sanctions are extraterritorial in nature and can have significant impact, especially if we target their banking and energy sectors, as well as Putin and the circle immediately around him, as proposed in recent congressional legislation,” he added.   

Some Kremlin watchers question whether targeting high-profile individuals, from oligarchs to government officials, has much of an effect aside from symbolism, arguing sanctioned individuals are compensated by the Kremlin for their losses and are not going to lobby Putin to modify or alter his policies as their status and wealth depend on their loyalty to him. 

They say sanctions need to be broad-based and impact key companies in Russia’s important energy, defense and financial sectors. Edward Fishman, a former member of the U.S. secretary of state’s policy planning staff, has long maintained the penalties imposed on Putin’s Russia in the past were watered down because U.S. allies were reluctant to suffer blowback economic costs and wanted to reduce harm to ordinary Russians. 

“To change Putin’s behavior, you need to ratchet up sanctions on companies in the energy, defense and financial sectors — that would more likely force the Kremlin to shift its calculus,” he told VOA recently. “The scale of sanctions has to be much greater to prompt a change in behavior.”   
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Russia said Thursday it is shutting down the operations of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in response to Berlin’s ban on Russian broadcaster RT DE.

Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement it was closing Deutsche Welle’s Russian bureau, stripping all its staff of their accreditation, and stopping the channel being broadcast on Russian territory.

Germany’s MABB media watchdog and Commission for Licensing and Supervision (ZAK) of media institutions said this week that RT DE could not broadcast in Germany using a Serbian license.
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The World Health Organization’s European region director says that while COVID-19 cases on the continent continue to rise, he sees a plausible endgame for the pandemic in Europe in coming months.

Speaking during his weekly virtual news briefing from his headquarters in Copenhagen, WHO Europe Region Director Hans Kluge told reporters the region recorded 12 million cases in the past week, the highest weekly case incidence since the start of the pandemic, largely driven by the omicron variant.

But Kluge said, while hospitalizations continue to rise – mainly in countries with lower vaccination rates — they have not risen as fast as the rate of new infection, and admissions to intensive care units have not increased significantly. Meanwhile, deaths from COVID-19 have remained steady.

Kluge said the pandemic is far from over, but, for the first time, he sees what he called an opportunity to take control of transmission of disease because of the presence of three factors: an ample supply of vaccine plus immunity derived from a large number of people having had COVID-19; the favorable change of the seasons as the region moves out of winter; and the now-established lower severity of the omicron variant.

The WHO regional director said those factors present the possibility of “a long period of tranquility” and a much higher level of population defense against any resurgence in transmission, even with the more virulent omicron variant.

Kluge called it “a cease-fire that could bring us enduring peace,” but only if nations continue vaccinating and boosting, focusing on the most vulnerable populations, and people continue “self-protecting behavior,” such as masking and social distancing, though he added, “with lower governmental oversight to limit unnecessary socio-economic impacts.”

More nations in Europe are scaling back or removing government-imposed COVID-19-related restrictions.

Kluge said officials need to intensify surveillance to detect new variants. He said new strains are inevitable, but he believes it is possible to respond to them without the disruptive measures that were needed early in the pandemic.

Some information in this report came from the Associated Press.
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All eyes are on Russian President Vladimir Putin, as he has amassed more than 100,000 troops near the borders of Ukraine. Experts say Putin may have placed himself in a difficult position in an effort to elevate Russia’s standing in the world. VOA’s Cindy Saine reports.
Producer: Mary Cieslak
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The United States is moving forces into Eastern Europe as Russia continues its buildup near Ukraine. The Pentagon says the U.S. is responding to allies’ requests regarding a possible Russian invasion. VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb reports.

Cameras: Mike Burke, Adam Greembaum, Carla Babb.
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U.S. lawmakers are nearing a deal on sanctions aimed at deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine. Several lawmakers who recently returned from a trip to Kyiv told VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson there is broad bipartisan unity on confronting Russia.

Camera: Russian Service Produced by: Katherine Gypson
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A British judge this week ordered the family of an Azerbaijani lawmaker to forfeit some $7.6 million to the National Crime Agency on the grounds that the funds were illegally brought into Britain.

The judgment against the family of Javanshir Feyziyev, a member of Azerbaijan’s parliament, relates to the so-called Azerbaijani Laundromat, a complex money-laundering scheme that was initially exposed by Danish newspaper Berlingske and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in 2017.

Records indicate that four United Kingdom-registered shell companies processed some $2.9 billion in transactions, which Azerbaijan’s ruling elite were allegedly using to bribe European politicians, buy luxury goods and enrich themselves.

Azerbaijan’s government routinely ranks low on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index reflecting the country’s continuing struggle to make gains in democratic elections, judicial independence and free press.

“The current kleptocratic system owes its existence to corruption and bribery,” Azerbaijani human rights defender and former prosecutor Rufat Safarov told VOA.

Once imprisoned by Azerbaijan authorities on what international human rights organizations deemed politically motivated charges, Safarov considers graft to be almost standard for governance in his country.

“The state governing structures — institutions tasked with the fight against corruption — not only fail to fulfill their functions, but in government structures, inclination toward bribery is ordinary,” Safarov said.

According to economist Gubad Ibadoglu, in Azerbaijan, the fight against corruption is an imitation. In his view, the endemic corruption has affected judiciary, police and even social security organs of the state.

“Corruption is intertwined with political system and authoritarian governance,” Ibadoglu told VOA, adding that all branches of the government are under the thumb of the executive branch.

Azerbaijani authorities, however, persistently reject such assessments of the country’s record on corruption.

Gunay Selimzade, press officer for the prosecutor general, states that her government takes “intensive measures” to remedy corruption in the spheres of legislation, criminal investigation and raising public awareness.

“The fight against corruption in Azerbaijan via institutional and criminal investigative measures has been highly assessed by experts of the influential international organizations,” she told VOA.

Kamran Aliyev, the country’s chief prosecutor, recently touted some statistics as evidence of the ongoing struggle against corruption. According to him, police have closed criminal corruption investigations involving nearly 500 individuals in 2021.

Independent observers view such numbers more as an attempt to cover up the government’s poor record of combating corruption. According to Ibadoglu, reducing corruption will depend on the establishment of rule of law and an independent judiciary that can investigate charges of corruption.

To date, very few top officials have been charged or prosecuted on charges stemming from financial scandals reported abroad, including the notorious Azerbaijani Laundromat case.

This story originated in VOA’s Azerbaijan Service.
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Russia and China will discuss closer gas and financial ties during President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Beijing for the Winter Olympics, the Kremlin said Wednesday, and a long-held idea for a new gas pipeline to China is being examined.

Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will have lunch together Friday, and could sign more than 15 agreements, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, with lots of new deals being prepared in relation to natural gas.

Competition got underway Wednesday in the Beijing Winter Olympics as the shadow of war in Ukraine and the impending arrival of Putin, who will attend Friday’s opening ceremony, loomed over an event already transformed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Ushakov said the possibility of Russia building a new gas pipeline to China through Mongolia was being looked at, a project that has been discussed for a long time and would take years to be fully realized.

Deliveries via an existing pipeline, the Power of Siberia, a 4,000 kilometers project that transfers gas from eastern Russia to China, began in 2019. It took about a decade to reach an agreement on supply terms.

Some experts doubt that a second gas pipeline from Russia to China, which recently overtook Japan as the world’s largest importer of sea-borne liquefied natural gas, will come to pass.

But Putin’s visit comes at a time when the reliability of Russian gas supplies to Europe is being questioned by some Western politicians and when Moscow is keen to show it potentially has other options even if they are not realistic overnight.

“It is worth noting that the Chinese gas market is the most promising and fastest growing in the world,” said Ushakov.

Spot gas prices in Europe reached all-time highs in December amid soaring demand and limited supply. Russian gas supplies to Europe have come under scrutiny as upwards of 100,000 Russian troops have massed near the border of traditional gas transit nation Ukraine, raising fears of an invasion, something Moscow denies planning.

Western nations have threatened a slew of sanctions should Russia make an incursion onto Ukrainian territory. Ushakov said China supported Russia’s effort to extract security demands from the West.

Ushakov also said Moscow and Beijing are making serious efforts to create joint financial infrastructure that could safeguard Russia-China cooperation from potential sanctions from third countries.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov and Igor Sechin, CEO of oil major Rosneft, will be among the Russian delegation, Ushakov added.

 
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The Kremlin is ramping up a disinformation offensive aimed at demoralizing Ukraine and Western powers, using Russian state-owned broadcasters and trolls on social media platforms to portray the West as the aggressor and the government in Kyiv as a puppet of NATO, say Western officials and information war experts. 

Scare stories in recent days have included claims that Ukrainian commandos are planning to launch so-called “false flag” attacks in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine to justify NATO military action and that the United States is planning to attack Russia during this week’s Winter Olympics in China. 

The core message is that NATO and Kyiv present a major threat to Russia, they say.

Moscow has waged a sophisticated and multi-faceted information warfare campaign against Ukraine since 2014, when a popular uprising toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster in a color revolution that Moscow blamed on the West, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and seized part of the Donbas, initially using armed proxies. 

Western leaders fear Putin is prepared to invade Ukraine if he fails to secure concessions he wants from the United States and NATO that in effect would carve out for Russia a Soviet era-like sphere of influence across eastern Europe. Among Putin’s key demands is a guarantee that NATO will never expand eastward. Russian officials deny they have any intentions to invade their neighbor, despite an unprecedented massive military build-up along the borders of Ukraine. They accuse Western powers of causing alarm.

“The drumbeat of Kremlin propaganda is also becoming noticeably louder,” according to Yevhen Fedchenko, co-founder of fact-checking website StopFake.org, which monitors Russian disinformation.

“Over the past eight years, Moscow has been able to deploy an impressive and expanding arsenal of information weapons against Ukraine,” Fedchenko wrote in an expert commentary for the Atlantic Council, a U.S.-based research institution. 

“These have ranged from small armies of online trolls to lavishly funded mainstream media outlets that combine world-class production values with an often near-complete absence of journalistic ethics. Each individual element operates under direct or indirect Kremlin control. Together, they repeat and amplify variations of the same carefully curated messages designed to justify or otherwise support Russia’s undeclared war in Ukraine,” he maintains.

Shaping the message

Other analysts also say the Kremlin is making strenuous efforts to try to control the narrative in Ukraine and tailoring messages to Russians and key audiences outside Russia.

Tom Southern is director of special projects at the Center for Information Resilience (CIR), a UK-based NGO which exposes disinformation activities. Southern told British reporters there are two sides to the Kremlin’s information war — “what is being pushed in Ukraine, and what’s being pushed about Ukraine.” He said Kremlin propagandists work across a broad spectrum that uses official Russian government statements broadcast by its well-funded domestic and international media outlets but amplify key messages using social media sites and messaging apps like Telegram.

“This includes the messaging that Ukraine is a failed state and historical revisionism of Ukraine and NATO, as provoking Russia or targeting Russian speakers in Ukraine,” he says. A key message both to domestic Russian audiences and to international ones is that NATO is the aggressor and has broken promises it made as the Soviet Union collapsed about not expanding the Western alliance eastward.

The Russian leader has made the claim frequently about NATO skullduggery, accusing Western powers of taking advantage of a weakened, disoriented Russia as the Soviet Union fell apart. And the West’s supposed trickery and violation of a solemn pledge not to expand has figured prominently as an important component in a Putin foreign policy narrative which presents Russia as a victim and aggrieved party. This key message is being played across all Russian-controlled media outlets and broadcast on social media platforms, say disinformation experts. 

Authoritative historians say no such formal undertaking was ever given. And in 2014 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview, “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all” during his talks with U.S. leaders.

Kremlin propaganda output has been increasing compared to this time last year, according to Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s deputy minister of culture and information policy. Russia’s official websites are the main drivers, but technology is used by the Kremlin to “circulate harmful, hostile content” and to spread disinformation, he says. He says Russia’s prevailing narrative comprises three key messages — Ukraine is a failed state, Russia is peaceful and that the West wants war. 

Western broadcasters have been complaining in recent weeks that Russian state-controlled media have been misusing their reports and footage by dubbing over their dispatches with changed commentary designed to assist in shaping the message that the West is on a war footing and is preparing to attack. 

This is a variation on what disinformation experts dub ‘information laundering’ — using Western sources to undermine Western arguments, often by interviewing “experts” who are aligned with Moscow but have obscure backgrounds.

The Ukrainian Crisis Media Center, an NGO that receives funding from the European Union among others, has warned that the Kremlin is seeking to fan tensions with constant accusations that Ukraine is “preparing provocations.” One example it says was a recent claim that Ukraine and NATO were planning to launch a clandestine operation code named “Crushing Sword” which would use fake footage of Russian aggression and use that as a pretext to attack Russia. 
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Speaking to VOA from his New York apartment, Dmitry Savchenko, 34, recalls the prosperous life he recently left behind.

“In Belarus, we had everything. My wife had several cafes. I had two businesses myself, some real estate, an apartment, a car,” he said.

Savchenko and his family had never intended to leave their home. But in the last few months, for him and many other Belarussian citizens, what was once unthinkable became a dire necessity.

“We were faced with a dilemma: either go to prison or run and hide in another country,” he said.

Long described as “Europe’s last dictatorship,” Belarus has been run for 27 years by Alexander Lukashenko. But in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections, there was a sense among his opponents that he was politically vulnerable.

Savchenko says he has been apolitical his entire life, but in those months he, like many others, was “smelling change in the air,” inspired by the caliber and diversity of presidential candidates eager to challenge Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule.

Two months before election day, August 9, the hopeful Belarusian entrepreneur registered as an independent observer for the polls.

But Savchenko was setting himself up for a major disappointment.

On the day of the vote, Savchenko chronicled numerous irregularities in his precinct, which reached their climax with the members of the elections committee — which normally consist of regime loyalists — not letting the independent observers monitor the process in person. The elections committee members then fled the building with the ballots through the backdoor, escorted by the local police, Savchenko says. 

Hearing hundreds of stories like Savchenko’s from friends and family — as well as from independent media — ordinary Belarusians took to the streets. The country saw a rise of civic awareness unprecedented in its history. In Minsk alone, about 200,000 people came out for a peaceful protest on one of the post-election weekends.

And then the violence began.

Trying to drown people’s enthusiasm, Lukashenko, who baselessly claimed victory with more than 80% of the vote, unleashed a wave of repression and violence against the protesters. Video and photo evidence of police brutality, as well as of demonstrators’ mutilated bodies, made headlines around the world.

“Some of my friends participated in those protests,” Savchenko said. “It was heart-wrenching to even look at them (after their release from jail).”

Those who appeared to have suffered the most were those sent to the infamous Okrestina detention center in the country’s capital where, according to numerous detainee accounts, they were beaten and tortured for hours and not given food or water for days.

“Photos of the people who were released from the Okrestina detention center looked like the photos of people who came from war,” Savchenko added. “And I denounce that. Because people came out (to protest) unarmed.”

Savchenko says he is determined to punish those who so flagrantly abused the law. 

“I am gathering proof of falsifications of the election results, abuse of police authority. And I decided that I will bring them to justice no matter where I am,” he said.

He sent the incriminating evidence he had gathered to BYPOL, an independent union of Belarusian ex-security officers whose mission is to keep a registry of crimes committed by the Lukashenko regime.

The state’s crackdown drew international condemnation, but Savchenko says that did not stop the authorities from methodically targeting their critics after the elections.

“At first, the authorities cracked down on most vocal protesters, then on independent media. After that they started laying off state officials who — how should I put it — didn’t vote for ‘the right candidate.’ Slowly but surely, they got to the people who were election observers,” he said. 

For days, he was harassed and intimidated, then detained and beaten by the police. The authorities threatened to send his 5-year-old son to an orphanage.

So he and his family ran. First to Moscow, then all the way to Mexico City, then to Tijuana, then to the United States, where they are seeking political asylum.

Washington-based immigration lawyer Elizabeth Krukova specializes in providing legal help to asylum-seekers from the countries of the former Soviet Union. She says there are many others like the Savchenko family.

“We’ve seen a number of these cases and a big increase in the number of cases coming from Belarus specifically,” she said.

VOA spoke with several Belarusian asylum-seekers who arrived in the United States from the southern border following the post-election crackdown. They all spoke of intimidation, detainment and beatings by police back home.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows a steady increase in the number of encounters of Belarusian migrants by the southwest border CBP officers — from three in October 2020 to 123 in September 2021.

Savchenko says the main reason his family chose to travel to the U.S. instead of Europe is safety. 

“There is a network of Russian and Belarusian agents that are active in the countries neighboring Belarus, as well as in some EU states,” he said. 

Belarusian officials demonstrated their relentless pursuit of critics when they forced a civilian Ryanair flight to land in Minsk last year and arrested an opposition blogger, Roman Protasevich. Another exiled Belarusian activist, Vitaly Shishov, was found hanged in a park near his home in Kyiv, an unsolved case widely seen as the work of Minsk’s clandestine services.

John Sipher, the former CIA deputy chief of station in Europe, still views Europe as relatively safe but says the fears of dissidents are not groundless.

He says horror stories of kidnappings and murders spread among dissidents “like wildfires.” 

“If there are a few cases where Belarusians are hunted down or arrested, or brought back to Minsk, then it becomes a story that makes its way around that community,” Sipher said.

With Russian troops now massing in Belarus and more on the border of Ukraine, experts see the region’s authoritarian leaders becoming more collaborative, putting their critics at greater risk.

“Since Lukashenko’s crackdown in the last year or so, he is going to be looking for more opportunities to assist (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and Putin is going to be looking for means to work with Belarusians on these issues,” Sipher said.

Experts say whether an activist is in danger depends on how high their name is on the Belarusian KGB’s priorities list. But it’s a guessing game no one on the list wants to play. 

VOA’s Aline Barros contributed to this report. 

 
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The continuing crackdown on pro-democracy activists following the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus has spurred a wave of political asylum seekers. VOA’s Igor Tsikhanenka spoke with some who undertook a long and uncertain journey to Mexico and on to the United States in recent months. Some of them say they had no other choice because they no longer feel safe even in the European Union. Camera: Aaron Fedor
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For the last eight years, Ukraine has lived under a permanent state of alert, with the constant threat of Russian intervention in its territory. The fear and tension have led many civilians to seek military training to be prepared in the event of a conflict.  Jonathan Spier narrates this report for VOA from Ricardo Marquina in Kyiv.
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Since 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainians have lived in a permanent state of alert, facing a constant threat of further Russian incursions. With a possibility of a full-scale invasion now looming, many civilians have volunteered to undergo military training to be prepared in the event of a conflict. They use equipment and weapons they buy with their own money and train in their spare time. For VOA, reporter Ricardo Marquina spent a day with them at a training site outside of Kyiv and brings us these images.
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The top diplomats from the United States and Russia are expected to speak by phone Tuesday, a day after United Nations representatives from the two countries faced off at the U.N. Security Council over Russian-denied allegations that it is planning a large-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine. 

Tuesday’s diplomatic efforts to address the crisis also include a trip by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. 

“We urge Russia to step back and engage in dialogue to find a diplomatic resolution and avoid further bloodshed,” Johnson said in a statement. 

Britain, like the United States and other Western allies, has provided weapons to Ukraine, and Johnson is considering doubling British troops in the Baltic countries. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held face-to-face talks January 21 in Geneva, and since then the two sides have exchanged written responses in order to try to make their positions clear. 

Russia said a U.S. document failed to address its core security concerns, which include its opposition to further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, especially to Ukraine. The United States, NATO and Ukraine have all deemed such a demand an unacceptable restriction on their ability to decide their own affairs. 

The United States received a Russian response letter Monday, but State Department officials declined to discuss its contents, citing a desire to keep the negotiation process private. 

The United States has threatened to impose sharp economic sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine. In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, and it says it has no plans to invade Ukraine again.  

“The situation we’re facing in Europe is urgent and dangerous, and the stakes for Ukraine — and for every U.N. member state — could not be higher,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told Security Council members Monday. 

She said the more than 100,000 troops Russia has amassed along Ukraine’s border include combat forces and special forces prepared to conduct offensive actions into the former Soviet republic.     

“This is the largest — this is the largest — hear me clearly — mobilization of troops in Europe in decades,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “And as we speak, Russia is sending even more forces and arms to join them.”

She said that included the nearly 5,000 Russian troops “with short-range ballistic missiles, special forces and anti-aircraft batteries” that Moscow had moved into its close ally and neighbor Belarus. There is evidence Moscow plans to increase their number to 30,000 troops by early February, she added.     

The U.S. ambassador said Russia’s aggression threatens Ukraine, Europe and the international order.     

“An order that, if it stands for anything, stands for the principle that one country cannot simply redraw another country’s borders by force or make another country’s people live under a government they did not choose,” she said.     

As Thomas-Greenfield spoke, President Joe Biden issued a statement from the White House.  

“If Russia is sincere about addressing our respective security concerns through dialogue, the United States and our allies and partners will continue to engage in good faith,” Biden said. “If instead, Russia chooses to walk away from diplomacy and attack Ukraine, Russia will bear the responsibility, and it will face swift and severe consequences.”      

He later told reporters in the Oval Office while meeting with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, that the United States is ready for any scenario in Russia, but, he added, “We continue to urge diplomacy as the best way forward.”        

Russian response    

At the Security Council, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia tried to use a procedural vote to block Monday’s public meeting but narrowly failed to get the requisite support.     

He said Russia is not “scared” of discussing the issue, but it just did not understand why a discussion was necessary.  

“The deployment of Russian troops within our own territory has frequently occurred on varying scales before and has not caused any hysterics whatsoever,” Nebenzia said.

He said that the United States and Western colleagues were acting as though an invasion had already taken place, and that they presented no evidence that one was planned.     

“Our Western colleagues are talking about the need for de-escalation, but first and foremost, they are whipping up tensions, rhetoric and provoking escalation,” he said, calling the discussions about a threat of war “provocative.”   

All Russian officials have “categorically rejected” plans for an invasion, he said, and anyone who claims the opposite is “misleading you.”      

Sovereign rights   

Based on its past experiences with Moscow, Ukraine simply cannot accept Russia’s declaration, and Moscow should withdraw its troops from near its borders, Ukrainian envoy Sergiy Kyslytsya told the council.  

“Ukraine strongly rejects any attempt to use the threat of force as an instrument of pressure to make Ukraine and our partners accept illegitimate demands. There is no room for compromise on principle issues,” Kyslytsya said. “The most principled position for Ukraine is that we have (an) inherent sovereign right to choose our own security arrangements, including treaties of alliance which cannot be questioned by Russia.”   

He emphasized that Kyiv is prepared to defend itself but supports keeping diplomatic channels with Moscow open. He noted that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he is willing to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  

“If Russia has any questions to Ukraine, it is better to meet and talk, not to bring troops to Ukraine’s borders and intimidate Ukrainian people,” the envoy said.     

After the meeting, in response to reporters’ questions, Kyslytsya said he believes a Russian invasion is “imminent.” Asked what he meant by “imminent,” he referenced an English-Russian dictionary of diplomacy, reading in Russian.     

“Imminent, the first meaning, published in Moscow: approaching, hanging over and only then unavoidable,” he said, translating for reporters. “So, we have to work very hard so that the first two stay as it is — the threat is hanging over. It’s our duty.”   

Intensifying crisis    

U.S. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Monday that “we continue to see, even over the course of the weekend … additional Russian ground forces move in Belarus and around the border with Ukraine,” as well as “increasing naval activity in the Mediterranean and Atlantic by Russian fleet vessels.” He called the Russian movements “concerning.”  

NATO has increased its military presence in member countries bordering Russia, but NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday that NATO has no intention of sending troops to Ukraine if Russia invades the former Soviet republic.       

VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb and VOA’s Chris Hannas contributed to this report. Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
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Will Russia invade Ukraine? While the world waits, the war of words is picking up steam, with top diplomats from the U.S. and Russia going head-to-head at the United Nations and President Joe Biden vowing that the U.S. is ready “no matter what happens.” VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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