The US coordinates with Brussels its position against Russia to alleviate European suspicion

The Undersecretary of State, Wendy Sherman, with the president of the Security Policy Committee of the Council of the EU, Delphine Pronk, this Tuesday in Brussels.POOL (REUTERS)

Russia is going all out in its challenge to regain some of the influence lost in Europe after the fall of the USSR using the conflict with Ukraine as a spearhead. This has raised great fear in the European Union, both because of the threat to security that it may pose and because of the neglect to which the Vladimir Putin regime submits in the negotiations to find a way out. This Monday there was a bilateral meeting in Geneva between representatives of Washington and Moscow. On Wednesday there will be another between NATO and Russia. And on Thursday they will meet again at a meeting of the OSCE, an organization of which all states in conflict are members, in Vienna. Faced with this key week to take the true temperature of the conflict, the United States has intensified its contacts with its European partners this Tuesday, when the Undersecretary of State,Wendy Sherman, has met with the ambassadors of The Twenty-seven in the Security and Defense Policy Committee of the Council of the EU and, later, with the Secretary General of the EU External Action Service, Stefano Sannino.

The misgivings of the European Union for the contempt to which Moscow is subjecting have found a response from the White House in a statement that includes an extensive list of more than 100 meetings, telephone calls and contacts that its representatives have maintained with the European allies. In fact, in the face of the repeated statements of days ago in which Brussels demanded that matters related to European security be negotiated with Europeans, the text released in Washington is headed with a few words from the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken: “ We are absolutely committed to the principle of nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, as much as we are with the principle of nothing about Europe without Europe. "

Trying to avoid the constant European demands to be in the negotiations from being interpreted as an unease with Washington, the high representative for EU Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, declared on Monday to British television BBC that the Geneva appointment was not more than "a first step to explore" the Russian demands. In addition, the head of European diplomacy attacked Moscow in that interview by pointing out that its demands "contravene the security of Europe" and even violate the Helsinki treaty of 1975. European diplomatic sources also try to underline the great coordination between the partners and they emphasize the interpretations that suggest that the Russian position is a negotiating tactic.

Also the main spokesman of the European Commission, Eric Mamet, has tried this Tuesday to flee from the image that Russia is succeeding in its attempt to bypass the EU when asked about the absence of the European Union in Geneva, at the NATO meeting or the one that will take place in Vienna on Thursday with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "We are not part of NATO," the senior official recalled, "but there are the member states, which are, also of the OSCE." Behind these words is the intention of making Moscow see that it can try to avoid Europe in its attempt to return to the world of spheres of influence typical of the Cold War, but it is found again in multilateral bodies such as the Atlantic Alliance or the OSCE, whose current Secretary General,the German Helga Schmid, was until a few months ago the secretary general of the EU Foreign Action Service, that is, pure Brussels nomenclature.

After Monday's meeting, the weather has darkened more than it already was. The week had started with the question of how far Putin, who has more than 100,000 soldiers deployed on the border with Ukraine, is willing to go. Upon leaving, the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Ryabkov, accused the United States of putting European security at risk. Something that was answered by Sherman, who described Moscow's position at the table as "the opposite of starting points" for a negotiation.

Russia's demand that NATO return to its borders in 1997 would not only mean a veto on the entry of Ukraine, something that is not on the table for now, or of Finland and Sweden, a possibility that is seriously considered. It would also imply that Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the three Baltic republics, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Albania should come out of the umbrella of the organization. Moscow tries to convey the idea that the Alliance threatens its security, something to which its general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, and Borrell usually reply by saying that it is a defensive organization that only responds militarily in the event of a military attack on one of its members.

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