War in the making: Will NATO accept Putin’s demands not to invade Ukraine?

The much-noticed invasion of Russia a Ukraine continues to maximize tensions, with threats from both sides. While the Western allies, with the United States in the lead, again warned Moscow of “massive sanctions” if a military attack is carried out, Russia announced a series of aerial exercises in the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed in 2014, and in two other border regions.

As the tirades continue, there is one thing that the Kremlin sees as a red line, and that is the written response that OTAN due this week about the security guarantees that Moscow demands and that is the knot -or pretext- to move forward or backward.

• Will there be World War III? This is what we know about the Russia-Ukraine conflict
• Russia vs. Ukraine: In which European countries are NATO troops “on alert”?
• Ukraine receives tons of weapons sent by the West to contain Russia; It will be enough?

“Before understanding how we are going to continue, we must receive the text (of the answers), which we expect this week”Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said on Tuesday.

The security guarantees demanded by Moscow include curbing further expansion of the OTAN towards its border, in particular to Ukraine and Georgia; the cessation of all military cooperation with the former Soviet republics (Russia is very sensitive about its historical zone of influence); and the withdrawal of troops and weapons from the OTAN to the positions they held before 1997.

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has already announced that NATO will not allow Vladimir Putin to impose a veto on him. REUTERS/File Photo (POOL/)

After several diplomatic meetings between both parties during January, both the United States and the OTAN They promised to deliver this week the written answers to this request for guarantees, but the document has not yet appeared.

READ ALSO: Time is short: Are Russia and Ukraine on the brink of war?

For the analyst and security expert, Román Ortiz, Russian President Vladimir Putin is at a dead end. “At this point it is very difficult to imagine that he can go back, especially since the requests he has made are impossible for NATO to accept”, he explains to El Comercio.

“It is very difficult to know what the outcome will be, but it seems extremely difficult to me that we do not end up in a kind of military confrontation. The big question is what will be the size and scope of this confrontation?, Add.

As he points out, the OTAN you will send your responses in writing. The detail is that the answers will not be what Putin expects. “What NATO is going to say is that it reserves the right to accept the countries that they consider. That is to say, they are not going to accept the veto that Putin wants to impose”, esteem.

The Russian ambassador to Peru, Igor Romanchenko, had already commented to this newspaper on the importance of the written response from NATO and Washington: “It is important for us to obtain legally binding security guarantees written on paper (we know very well how our Western partners fulfill their verbal commitments)”.

Ukrainian servicemen review a powerful anti-tank weapon provided by the British Army. REUTERS (UKRAINIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY/)

A boomerang?

“As in any crisis there is also a theatrical component, and that component is this of the written responses. I think that the great threat for Putin is that Ukraine becomes a prosperous and democratic country, and that can weaken the Russian regime, because Ukraine would be the demonstration that Russia could be different”Ortiz points out.

“Putin no longer needs any pretext to intervene, he has already made the decision.”

In the midst of all this tension, we must add a component that was not expected in the short term: neutral countries such as Finland and Sweden, which are also members of the European Union, have reactivated the debate on their possible accession to the Atlantic Alliance. Finland also borders Russia.

Sanctions on the Russian economy

Meanwhile, the warnings continue to come and go from both sides. A high-level White House source told the media that they are already preparing sanctions “with massive consequences”, such as banning the export of US technology to Russia.

“The export control options that we are considering with our allies would deal a severe blow to Putin’s ambitions to industrialize his economy and affect areas that are important to him, for example, artificial intelligence, quantum computers, defense, aerospace and other key sectors”, detailed the official.

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, together with his country’s military high command. (ALEXEY NIKOLSKY / SPUTNIK / AFP).

However, Russia has already been preparing for a potential scenario of heavy Western sanctions by locally bolstering its economy and increasing its reserves. At the same time, Russia expressed concern about the US decision to put 8,500 soldiers on “high alert” for eventual deployment to Eastern Europe, and this Tuesday rcarried out a series of aerial military exercises, in which more than 60 combat aircraft participated, including Su-27SM and Su-30SM2 fighters, and SU-34 fighter-bombers.

The Russian Defense Ministry also announced military exercises in the western constituency, which borders Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states.

“I can’t imagine Putin backing down unless he can say he got something, but his demands are extreme. And I think one of the key factors here is that he needs to assert his political control within Russia.”Ortiz concludes.

• The US does not rule out preparing more soldiers to deploy near Ukraine in the face of the threat from Russia
• Ukraine receives tons of weapons sent by the West to contain Russia; It will be enough?
• Run away or stay? Ukrainians prepare for the worst, a full-scale invasion of Russia
• The threats of anti-vaccines to a COVID-19 patient who they accuse of being an actor who faked the disease
• He was kidnapped at 16 and released at 58: the story of the man who spent his entire life in captivity
• Jacinda Ardern postpones her wedding due to coronavirus outbreak in New Zealand