Putin Meets With Macron, Envoys From France, Germany, Russia And Ukraine Meet For Talks Without U.S.

Russia has a new secret weapon in its standoff with the West

Elena Chernenko,

This article originally appeared in Kommersant.

Last Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin had a phone call with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, who became the first Western leader to hear the Kremlin’s reaction to the US and NATO responses to the security guarantees Moscow has recently demanded. 

Putin pointed out that Washington and the US-led military bloc had “failed to take into consideration Russia’s security concerns.” However, it looks like the Kremlin is no hurry to produce the promised “military-technical” response. Instead, Moscow clearly plans on deluging the West with further correspondence and diplomatic overtures.

The Kremlin’s press service reported that the two presidents had held an extensive telephone conversation that focused on the issue of providing Russia with long-term and legally binding security guarantees. Putin told Macron that “the Russian side would carefully study the written responses to the draft agreements on security guarantees received from the United States and NATO on January 26, after which it would decide on further action.”

Moscow's version of the talks also insists that Putin informed his French counterpart that “the US and NATO responses did not address Russia’s fundamental concerns.” These include stopping NATO expansion, not deploying assault weapons near Russia’s borders, and rolling back NATO’s military capacity and infrastructure in Europe to where they were in 1997, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.

These and other demands were presented in two draft treaties that Russia passed to the Biden administration and Washington’s European allies in December 2021. At about the same time, Putin reiterated Russia’s threats to take “military-technical measures” if NATO and the US kept on ignoring the nation’s primary concerns.

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