Dec 20, 2021: German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Sunday during a visit by German troops to Lithuania to prevent a Russian attack that NATO would discuss Russia’s security proposals but would not order Moscow to take a military position on the alliance.
On Friday, Moscow compiled a list of demands for the West, including the withdrawal of NATO battalions from Poland and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were once part of the Soviet Union. Russia is also demanding a legally binding guarantee that NATO will renounce any military action in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, and an effective Russian veto on Ukraine’s future NATO membership for Ukraine which the West has already rejected.
Combat units deployed in 2014, three years after Moscow’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, aim to prevent an attack and buy time for additional NATO troops to reach the front line.
“We need to solve the current tensions on the diplomatic level but just as well by putting up a credible deterrence,”
“We will discuss Russia’s proposals…But it cannot be that Russia dictates to NATO partners their posture, and that is something that we will make very clear in the talks (next week at the NATO council),” Lambrecht told reporters in Rukla on her first visit to German troops abroad.
The West has threatened tougher economic sanctions on Russia if Moscow increases its military readiness on the Ukrainian border. Moscow says it is only responding to threats to its security from Kiev’s growing close ties with NATO.
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