U.S. and Russian officials plan to extend a diplomatic process focused on European security matters, a prospect that could avert the looming threat of an expanded Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We are now on a clearer path in terms of understanding each other’s concerns, each other’s positions,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Geneva, where he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “Let’s see what the next days bring.”
Blinken agreed to give the written answer to the demands that Russia made in a so-called “draft treaty” unveiled before Christmas, an exchange that would set the table for another meeting with Lavrov or perhaps even a second summit between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Still, Ukraine and Western allies remain on guard for a fresh assault.
“To the extent that Russia’s engaged for now in diplomacy but at the same time continues to take escalatory actions, continues to build, as forces in Ukraine report, continues to plan for aggressive action against Ukraine,” he said. “We and all of our allies and partners are equally committed to make sure we are doing everything possible to Russia that there will be, as I said, a swift, severe, united response to any form of aggression by Russia directed toward Ukraine.”
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That support would not include a direct military intervention on Ukraine’s behalf, he acknowledged, despite the former Soviet satellite state’s vulnerability to the larger Russian military.
“Our Article 5 commitment extends to NATO allies,” Blinken said, referring to the collective defense provision of the NATO treaty. “Ukraine is not a member of NATO. It’s not covered by the Article 5 commitment, but [we have] a determination to do everything we can to defend it and to prevent or deter aggression directed toward it.”
Lavrov emphasized, at least in public, the importance of a written response to the “draft treaty” that contained Russia’s demands that U.S. and Western European members of NATO scrap the arrangements made to ensure the security of NATO’s eastern European members. Blinken and other Western officials rejected out of hand Russia’s core requirements, although Biden used a press conference this week to say that ”the likelihood that Ukraine is going to join NATO in the near term is not very likely” — a limited gesture toward the Russian attempt to pressure NATO into a pledge to never allow another country to join the alliance.
Blinken also offered a definition of the kind of “invasion” that would provoke the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia, in a reversion of Biden’s suggestion that a “minor incursion” into Ukraine might lead to trans-Atlantic disagreements about how to respond.
“If any Russian military forces move across Ukraine’s border, that’s a renewed invasion,” he said. “It will be met with swift, severe, and a united response from the United States and our partners and allies.”
Blinken acknowledged the potential for another Biden-Putin summit after the Russians review the impending written U.S. response to their draft treaty, although another meeting with Lavrov would be the more immediate priority.
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“We intend … to have follow-on conversations after that — initially, at least, at the level of foreign ministers,” he said. “And, if it proves useful and productive for the two presidents to meet, to talk, to engage, and to try to carry things forward, we’re fully prepared to do that.”
