Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an interview with Euronews, continued to jack up the pressure on Moscow over its alleged plans to invade Ukraine. “Well, we don’t know President Putin’s intent,” he said. “We don’t know if he’s made a decision to take renewed, aggressive action against Ukraine, but what we do know is that he’s putting in place the capacity to do so and to do so on short notice - and that’s very, very concerning. ... And so it’s been very important for me and for us to communicate very clearly to Russia the mistake that it would be to commit renewed aggression against Ukraine, the serious consequences that would result and our conviction that whatever differences there are, are best resolved through diplomacy, particularly through implementation of the Minsk agreements that have never been implemented.”
As for his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Stockholm on Dec. 2, Blinken had this to say: “"We had a very direct, candid conversation, as we usually do. No polemics. Very, very professional. Very straightforward. ... I wanted him to understand the concerns that we have, the consequences that would result if our concerns are realised by Russian aggression, but also our conviction that the best path forward is diplomacy, is for Russia to de-escalate, to pull back its forces and to engage meaningfully in implementing the Minsk agreement.” I.e., Russia must pull back its forces which are within their own territory, while NATO moves forces up to the Russian border.
“I expect that the presidents will speak in the near future and we’ll move on from there,” Blinken said later about the prospective Biden-Putin meeting. “But the first and most important thing is to just be very clear and very direct about how we see this, what our concerns are, what we’re going to do and what we would prefer to do, which is to reinvigorate the diplomacy and finally resolve the occupation of these territories in Ukraine.”
Blinken was not at all shy about threatening economic strangulation of Russia, if Putin does not do what he’s told. “There would be high impact economic consequences,” he said. “I think the universe of those consequences is well known to Moscow, and I hope that President Putin factors that into his calculus. At the same time, the United States, other countries have been working to make sure that Ukraine has the means to defend itself.” And of course, there would be military implications if NATO itself were threatened. “[W]hat’s most important for Russia to understand is that actions have consequences,” he said. “Those consequences are real. They’re not in Russia’s interests, and having a conflict is in no one’s interest.”
Blinken also rejected Moscow’s red line of NATO membership for Ukraine. “NATO’s door is open,” he said. “But this does not represent a threat to Russia because again, I emphasise ours is a defensive alliance. It’s a transparent alliance. It is not directed against Russia. It’s not a threat to Russia. And in fact, unfortunately, the only aggressive actions that we’ve seen in the Euro-Atlantic area in recent years have been Russian aggression against Georgia and then against Ukraine.”
