Tom Balmforth

MOSCOW (Reuters – Russia declared Sunday that it will not yield to U.S. demands at the talks on Ukraine’s crisis this week and for Western security assurances. There was also a possibility they could end soon.

Talks are scheduled in Geneva and Brussels. But the state-owned RIA news agency quotes Sergei Ryabkov, Deputy foreign Minister, as saying that it’s possible diplomacy can end abruptly after a single meeting.

He was quoted saying, “I cannot rule out any scenario, and this is an entirely plausible scenario. The Americans…should have no illusions about it.”

“Naturally,” we are not willing to make concessions in response to pressure or the threat of being made by Western participants at the forthcoming talks.

Interfax reported Ryabkov (who will be leading the Russian delegation to Geneva) as saying that Moscow wasn’t optimistic heading into the negotiations.

These comments were a clear signal that Moscow was not going to compromise at this crucial point in U.S.–Russian relations.

Tens of thousand of Russian troops have been gathered near the Ukrainian border in preparation of what Washington and Kyiv call a new invasion. This is eight years after Russia seizes the Crimea peninsula.

Russia claims it has no plans to invade Ukraine and denies any such invasion. It says that it responds to NATO’s provocative and aggressive behavior and Ukraine. Ukraine is Russia’s former Soviet partner, which tilts towards NATO.

Russia submitted a broad set of demands to NATO last month. They included a stop to NATO expanding further and an end NATO’s involvement in the central and eastern European nations that it joined after 1997.

NATO and the United States have declared that large portions of Russian proposals are non-starters.

On Saturday, a senior Biden administration official stated that the United States would not discuss the limits of U.S. troop deploys in the region or its force position in NATO countries.

The parties were open to talking about how they could limit missile and military deployments in the area.

Russia’s foreign minister said that Ryabkov and his team arrived in Geneva for formal negotiations.

Russia will also be participating in negotiations at NATO in Brussels, Wednesday and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna Thursday.