A senior Russian official has warned that Moscow will not end the war against Ukraine – resolved by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, more than three years ago – until NATO withdraws his Baltic troops, as reported by the media .
The Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Sergei Ryabkov, responsible for relations with the United States, non -proliferation and arms control, made these statements in an interview with the state news agency Tass.
Ryabkov’s comments make a change in the Kremlin position, as the American media has remarked. Thus, he suggested that the roots of the conflict not only reside in Ukraine itself, but also in the expansion of NATO to the east. According to him, the withdrawal of Baltic’s NATO forces would contribute to the end of the war.
NATO maintains a strong military presence in the Baltic states, with multinational brigades parked in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The alliance reinforced its presence in the region after the large -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. In addition, since the beginning of the conflict in February 2022, Sweden and Finland went from being neutral to join NATO
The Kremlin had said that Ukraine should abandon his ambitions to join NATO as a condition to end the war, but Ryabkov seems to have indicated to Tass that the alliance must also completely retire from the Baltic.
The Russian official argued that to resolve the conflict in Ukraine it is necessary to address what he described as the deep causes. “The US part requires practical measures aimed at eliminating the deep causes of fundamental contradictions between us in the field of security,” he said.
“Among these causes, the expansion of NATO occupies a prominent place. Without solving this fundamental and so pressing problem for us it is simply impossible to resolve the current conflict in the Euro -Atlantic region,” said Ryabkov, who suggested that NATO’s expansion to East was fundamental for war.
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