“We don’t want to be an uninvolved spectator”: EU wants to join the negotiating table between the USA and Russia – politics
The turn of the year in Russia is sometimes more than just the beginning of the next calendar – sometimes the end of the year marks the beginning of a new era. 30 years ago the Soviet Union was wound up and the Cold War was history. Vladimir Putin took over the presidency 22 years ago.
And this time the Kremlin chief could imagine himself at the height of his geopolitical power. On New Year’s Eve he phoned US President Joe Biden about the tension on the Ukrainian border and the security guarantees that Putin is demanding from the West. It was the second phone call between both heads of state within a month.
On January 9 and 10, Russian diplomats plan to confer with Americans in Geneva, then with representatives of NATO and the OSCE.
“We don’t want to be an uninvolved spectator”
The line to Washington should according to Putin’s taste being. The Russian President, for the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, cultivates a bilateral worldview as it was decades ago. He must have insulted him all the more that ex-President Barack Obama one day demoted the largest country in the world to a “regional power”.
Today, however, Putin sees himself on an equal footing with the US President, Moscow and Washington are negotiating the fate of the world. Europe is left out; Putin never wants to have much to do with the EU.
In Brussels it is expected to be seen differently, the conflict is finally unfolding on the continent where Russian troops are standing on the border with Ukraine. “We do not want to be an uninvolved audience, whose heads are being decided”, the EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell finally said before the “Welt” phone call.
EU becomes the negotiating table with one
The chairman of the conservative EPP parliamentary group in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber (CSU), told the Funke media group: “The EU must sit at the table as one of the main stakeholders in discussions about Europe’s future security architecture”. For this “unity of the EU states as well as an emancipation of the EU in terms of foreign and security policy are necessary”.
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The White House announced that the US government is in close contact with allies and partners in Europe on the talks with Moscow. Nothing concerning them would be decided without them, it was said.
Telephone diplomacy is bilateral. In a recent conversation, Biden warned that the US and its allies would “respond decisively” to invading Ukraine. The US president had previously threatened Putin with the law “as he has never seen it before”.
Conversation with Selenskyj
The Kremlin chief warned of serious measures. They would be a “colossal mistake”, as Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said after the 50-minute phone call. Putin was “satisfied” with the conversation.
The White House has announced that Biden will hold talks with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Selenskyj, on Sunday. Biden will “reaffirm US support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” it said.
He is looking forward to the interview, said Zelenskyi on Twitter. He is also not present at the deliberations in Geneva. Putin prefers to negotiate as it was during the Cold War.