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Egypt Independent
Senior US and Russian diplomats formally launched special negotiations to achieve strategic stability at the US diplomatic mission in Geneva on Monday.
The talks are part of a flurry of European diplomatic activities this week which aim at defusing tension over the Russian military build-up on the border with Ukraine.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov and his delegation met with Wendy Sherman the US deputy Secretary of State and her team. The meeting is part of the “Strategic Security Dialogue” talks launched by US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at a June summit in Geneva.
After an informal dinner on Sunday, Ryabkov predicted “difficult”. It will be followed by a NATO-Russia meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, and a meeting of the multilateral Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday.
Western diplomatic sources say, “Moscow has sought to wrest a string of concessions from the US and its Western allies”. Russian demands include requests for “guarantees that NATO will no longer expand eastward into former Soviet states like Ukraine”.
Western diplomats claim that These demands “came after Russia has amassed an estimated 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, which raised concerns about a possible deeper military intervention”.
“At the Sunday’s dinner Sherman stressed the United States’ commitment to the international principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the freedom of sovereign nations to choose their own alliances”, US State Department spokesman Ned Price noted.
