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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that his administration was analyzing the reactions of the US and NATO to his security requests concerning Ukraine, but that it was evident that the Kremlin’s key grievances had been “ignored.”
For weeks, Putin has said nothing publicly about the crisis generated by Russia’s mass deployment of tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s borders, raising fears of an invasion.
However, during a five-hour meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Moscow on Tuesday, Putin stated: “It is obviously apparent – as I informed the Prime Minister – that basic Russian concerns were neglected. We didn’t see a thorough examination of our three primary needs.”
Putin went on to say that Russia had not received “adequate consideration of our three key demands regarding NATO expansion, the renunciation of the deployment of strike weapons systems near Russian borders, and the return of the [NATO] bloc’s military infrastructure in Europe to the state it was in in 1997, when the Russia-NATO founding act was signed.”
Putin also bluntly accused the US of wanting to “drag us into military war” over the Ukraine situation by using the nation as a “tool” for NATO activities. He asserted that Washington’s main purpose is to force “allies in Europe to apply very harsh sanctions against us,” or “bring Ukraine into NATO.”
The US and NATO have warned that Putin’s demands, which include a vow not to expand eastward to cover Ukraine, contravene NATO’s open-door principle and are non-starters in discussions.
On Tuesday, Putin did not provide any ideas, but he did suggest he was open to future talks.
“I hope that this debate will continue,” he added, adding, “I hope that we will finally find this answer, even if it will not be simple, as we are aware.” But, of course, I’m not ready to reveal what that will be today.”
Putin concluded the press conference with a brief lesson on NATO’s history of dishonesty, alleging that the alliance vowed to advance “not an inch” eastward. “They stated one thing and did something else,” Putin remarked. “They messed us over,” much say, “but they merely fooled us.”