Saturday, February 12, 2022

1-on-1 with Putin at Kremlin

Last Monday evening Macron talked with Putin in Moscow for 5 hours, then they had press conference.  

Putin’s permanent hope is that this time machine could return things to the moment in 1997 – the year of the otherwise unimportant agreement between NATO and Russia.
He wants to revert to a Europe of that time – a time when the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were not yet members of NATO.  Is he asking the impossible in the hope that he will at least gain something?
Or is he really hoping for a return to an old status quo. The success or failure of the negotiations depends on our understanding this.
Putin certainly has NATO in his sights. “Ask your citizens whether they want France to enter into a war with Russia.  We are concerned about European security as a whole,” declared President Putin before the French president, in a message full of innuendo. ...\

The West has told Putin in no uncertain terms that Russia will gain no special “sphere of influence”, and Ukraine is firmer than ever in its rejection of any special status for Donbas, where Russian proxies are operating.   https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/macron-faces-a-calculating-and-unbending-putin-in-moscow.html

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