Top US and Russian officials held crucial talks Monday on soaring tensions over Ukraine and security demands from Moscow, with little hope of a diplomatic breakthrough on the table.
The high-stakes negotiations come with Russian troops massing on Ukraine’s border and fears of an invasion, and Moscow demanding wide-ranging concessions from Washington and its NATO partners.
The talks launch a week of high-stakes diplomacy between Russia and the West, after Moscow amassed tens of thousands of troops at the Ukrainian border, drawing the United States and Europe into a Cold War-style stand-off.
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov opened their meeting at the US mission in Geneva at 8:55 am (0755 GMT), officials said.
A convoy of black vehicles with Russian diplomatic plates had arrived shortly before, and was ushered through the large iron gates under a billowing US flag.
The two diplomats had already met informally in the Swiss city on Sunday evening, with Ryabkov afterwards telling Russian news agencies the first meeting had been “difficult”.
Ryabkov was quoted by state news agency RIA Novosti Monday as saying he feared Washington was not taking seriously Moscow’s demand of an end to NATO’s eastward expansion.
Pointing to a 2008 promise by NATO to consider membership for Ukraine and Georgia, Ryabkov said: “Are they ready to give legal guarantees that this country, as well as other countries… will not join NATO?”
“I have a rather pessimistic forecast in this regard.” Sherman in the talks on Sunday stressed “the freedom of sovereign nations to choose their own alliances,” the State Department said.
In the muddy trenches on the frontline in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces have been battling pro-Russian fighters since 2014, there was little hope for diplomacy.
“I doubt that anything will change,” 29-year-old soldier Mykhailo said as he walked through trenches in the town of Avdiivka, just north of the separatist stronghold city of Donetsk.
“Guarantees of not joining NATO will never stop” Putin, Mykhailo said, adding: “he wants to return the Soviet Union in version 2.0.”
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