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LAST UPDATE | 12 Jan 2022
THE US AND Nato have rejected key Russian security demands for easing tensions over Ukraine, but left open the possibility of future talks with Moscow to discuss other issues like arms control, missile deployments and ways to prevent military incidents.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that the 30-country military alliance halt its expansion and withdraw troops or military equipment from countries neighbouring Russia like Ukraine, but also Nato allies like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Speaking after a meeting of the Nato-Russia Council, US secretary of state Wendy Sherman reaffirmed that some of Putin’s security demands “are simply non-starters”.
“We will not slam the door shut on Nato’s open-door policy,” she told reporters after almost four hours of talks at the military organisation’s headquarters in Brussels.
“We are not going to agree that Nato cannot expand any further.”
The meeting, the first of its kind in over two years, was called amid concerns in the West that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine, with around 100,000 combat-ready troops, tanks and heavy military equipment massed near Ukraine’s eastern border.
“Escalation does not create optimum conditions for diplomacy, to say the least,” Sherman said.
Moscow denies it has fresh plans to attack its neighbour.
Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and backed a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The fighting there has killed more than 14,000 people in seven years and devastated Ukraine’s industrial heartland, known as the Donbas.
The European Union and the US have hit Russia with sanctions for its actions against Ukraine.
Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, who chaired the meeting today, said Nato nations and Russian envoys “expressed the need to resume dialogue and to explore a schedule of future meetings”.
Sherman also expressed optimism, given that Moscow has not rejected the idea of talks.
Stoltenberg said Nato is keen to discuss ways to prevent dangerous military incidents or accidents and reduce space and cyber threats, as well as to talk about arms control and disarmament, including limits on missile deployments.
But he acknowledged any talks about Ukraine would not be easy.
“There are significant differences between Nato allies and Russia on this issue,” he told reporters, after “a very serious and direct exchange” with Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko and deputy defence minister Alexander Fomin.
Stoltenberg underlined that Ukraine has the right to decide its future security arrangements on its own, and that Nato would leave its door open to new members, rejecting a key demand by Putin that the military organisation halt its expansion.
“No one else has anything to say, and of course Russia does not have a veto,” he said.
The Nato-Russia Council was the first meeting of its kind since July 2019. The forum was set up two decades ago but full meetings paused when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014. It has met only sporadically since.
Putin says Russia’s demands are simple, but key parts of the proposals in the documents that Moscow has made public — a draft agreement with Nato countries and the offer of a treaty between Russia and the US — were rejected.
Nato would have to agree to halt all membership plans, not just with Ukraine, and scale down its presence in countries close to Russia’s borders, like Estonia.
In exchange, Russia would pledge to limit its war games, as well as end aircraft buzzing incidents and other low-level hostilities.
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That’s good, democracy matters and shouldn’t be ignored just because financially they are a powerhouse
@JC O’Connachain: you’re right, but I was a bit put of by “As democratically elected legislators” from someone who was explicitly unelected by the people. Looking through the list, it is a collection of previously elected people trying to issue sanctions on a country with blatant human rights issues, but doing from the safety of their unelected ivory towers.
@Brynþór Patrekursson: how exactly does this work? Does the govt here sign up Ireland to the list or is it that Ireland has signed up to it because some unelected individuals have signed us up to IPAC?
@JC O’Connachain: China is a dïsgusting country. What we’re seeing now from the CCP is an exact replica of Nazi Germany with infringements and false claims to neighbouring countries territories and claims to the entire south China sea. Not to mention the cultural genocide inflicted on the Tibetan, uighir and Mongol peoples.
It’s adorable that you think this has anything to do with “democracy” rather than our own western economic power houses trying to form an iron clad trade bloc to hobble China.
@SJF: Not as adorable as you with your shirt, tie and wee stethoscope!!
@SJF: whatever spin they put on it I don’t care, this should have been done 10 years ago, who wants a future world financially controlled by the Chinese, also sick of 9 out of ten items that comes into my home having made in China on the box and then breaking after 2 weeks to 6 months, lol
@Hugo Bugo: Well the western powers plundered China for decades..In less than 70 years China has become on par with the U.S.and Europe in Economic matters. It must gaul the Impearlist nations and especially the U.S. they backed the wrong horse and Lost China. It still rankles the U.S.
@SJF: what you say is true. But it’s also true that China has some horrific human rights abuses. There is always going to be that factor of interested parties, money to be made etc… But that doesn’t mean we turn a cheek to concentration camps in Xinjiang. We also have a right to stand up for our own citizens, and yes the EU as a trading bloc has a right to protect itself against China, US or any other economic powers. And of course, China does try to hobble its own competitors? The news in Asia is full of it. So yes, economic plays but kinda justified.
@SJF: shush, now. We’ve always been at (cold) war with EastAsia. Even that time Xi got that state visit to Britain in 2015 — we were always at war with EastAsia. In fact that didn’t happen. Fake news.
(Orwell was wrong about needing NewSpeak to control the masses.).
@Hugo Bugo: the idea that the Chinese can’t manufacture good quality items is a myth. They have the world’s best industrial processes. 10 years ago many of the signatories to this document were celebrating globalisation and outsourcing, and many still are. Provided China provided cheap labour it was fine. Now that it competes on technology and challenges the US empire in its backyard, it’s evil.
@Donal Desmond: most of Europe isn’t, or hasn’t been, imperial. It’s really the US that has its nose out of joint because China is becoming independent of US imperialism. The EU needs to stay out of this, and it is looking like it mostly is.
@Petulant mcbarity: Up to the end of WW1 all major powers in Europe.. England, France, Germany, Russia Italy, Portugal also U.S.Japan had major territory and economic concessions in China. At the end of WW2 British interests included Shanghai and Hong Kong..by then the major player was the U.S. who backed a dictatorship and Lost. To this day it rankles the U.S. on how to use their phrase (Lost China.).
@Hugo Bugo: How did these 9 out of ten items come into your home? You need a burglar alarm. O no! They’re imported from China too.
I think McDowell should look closer to home if he wants to cast his gaze at extreme far left communism. The proposed “right to housing” bill supported by many elected TD’s contains in part 2, (3) the right to seize property “for the common good.” Many of the most heinous crimes in the history of humanity have been built on the foundations of “the common good.”
“The State, accordingly, shall delimit the right to private property where it is necessary
to ensure the common good and to vindicate the said right to housing for all residents
of Ireland.”
https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2020/21/eng/initiated/b2120d.pdf
@Seamus Hanratty: Straight out of the CCP playbook too. I can’t see this passing a referendum, maybe on the second or third time they put it on us.
@Seamus Hanratty: Well we all know where capitalist banks and big business facilitated by the political parties that are again in power has got us. Our grandchildren will still be paying for this gangsterism.
Seems the journal has a bit of China syndrome as well, why are the comments closed on the hunger strike misinformation article????
Awe but thy make everything we buy.
And allow child labour supported by big brands…
@Eddie Michael: don’t forget the virus, sharing nation.
@Eddie Michael: Then why buy it. From Penny’s to Brand names products are made cheaply in the far East, Yet the western companies thave no problem that their profits are produced by child Labour. Remember it was the Regan /Thatcher free markets who gave the go ahead for big business to move their plants to cheaper countries .
@Dave Barrett: an engineered virus….
@Eddie Michael: agreed. Will WHO agree with us though. There was 13 different variants in Wuhan well before Christmas.
@Eddie Michael: China broke the world.
So the Chinese government aren’t such a great bunch of lads after all?
@mikeinclon: have a look at what they are up to in the South China Sea. I’m guessing there will be military conflict there within a few years.
@Paul Furey: they’ve economically clobbered all the concerned nations into accepting their 9 dash line. There’s still the odd article in Asia on it but they’ve generally accepted it now at the political level with favours from China. The US might cause a war over it, Vietnam may resist China on it (they’re toughness personified) and US-Vietnamese meetings on the subject did take place, but I think they came to nothing. ROC also disagree but then PRC is just looking for an excuse to invade so I can’t see them kicking up too much a fuss, unless the US leverage their weapons supply to get them to proclaim their opposition more.
@Paul Furey: They are the only nation in the world that wants the nine dash line, while it infringes on the territory of at least 6 countries. But because they are the ones that make maps, they put the 9 dash line on all maps made in China. The Vietnamese HATE this, and especially now that China is doing a salami strategy of building one military base on an uninhabited island, and then another, and then another…..and BOOM! now its China’s, the rest of the world has no say.
There needs to be a tougher stance on the one China policy. No other nation has territorial disputes with as many neighbours as they do.
@Paul Cunningham: you sure about that? It’s nothing to do with ROC? 1947? Lol
Jeez
@Ní neart go cur le chéile.: this thread really took a turn to the serious from my poor attempt at a Fr. Ted joke. Interesting stuff though lads.
@mikeinclon: lol, when years ago first saw this “great bunch of lads” saying, was wondering why saying that, after watch the father … lol
As soon as China learns that the Healy Reas are against them it will know that the end is nigh.
Ireland is being a good little сhickwawa. The US master says bark and of we go and ineffectively bark. Irish politicians should be developing reactions with China and seek to understand in depth Chinese business, social and political culture. It would also make sense to understand who motivated the Hong Kong groups last year and for what purpose. Ireland should take a position of supporting a strong and stable China. One should remember that a one party system in China is equivalent to our Dail. There are many divisions in the party and democratic structures at these levels. Introducing another party is like having another constitution in Ireland. It is about time that our school teacher politician mentality grew into a university professor way of looking at things.
@THINK Paddy THINK: What utter rubbish! You are a cheerleader for a one party police state.
China is struggling to control a vast area and a myriad of different groups through the use of re-education camps, state propaganda and outright force.
The respective governments of Ireland and China are polar opposites. The Dail is a parliament elected by the people. The CCP is unelected and therefore it is tyrannical by default. Your claim of democracy within such tyranny is hilarious because it is ludicrous. There have been factions in every dictatorship in history, that didn’t make any difference to the people being ruled and oppressed. Who do you think is fooled by such BS?
@Will: Bit like when the U.S. had their camps in South East Asia… You conveniently fail to mention what the U.S. version of democracy did in Vietnam, Loas, Cambodia. The fact America lost China by backing a despot also seems to escape you.
@Will: i forgot to mention the senate in Ireland probably a better analogy. Nonetheless., Ireland is a pseudo democracy in that opposing views are not respected and pissed upon (IRA, Anti LGBTZ, Sinn Fein, etc). Not every view is tolerated. So why can you not respect a different political system where not every view is also not tolerated.
So in summary: Not a great bunch of lads?
Can we join the states and Canada in officially calling Xinjiang a genocide now?
The population of China is approximately 1.4 billion people.
@Philip Mulville: I’m sure the Chinese government use most of their time to analyse the views of Irish senators
I am completely opposed to Ireland joining the U.S. led coalition against the People’s Republic of China, a country that has taken more out of poverty than any country in history and whose handling of Uighur terrorists is a lesson in how to deal with this issue compared to the U.S. and West’s policy of indiscriminate bombing and massacres of all and sundry including thousands of innocent civilians. I believe there is much more and better democracy in China than in the facade of four year voting in Ireland and the West
@Brian Smyth: Why were they in poverty in the first place?
Yep, the CCP.
@TonyB: The Chinese revolution and the defeat of the foreign invaders was led by the Communist Party of China. The amazing progress of that country from serfs of the imperial powers to the stunning progress that has been made is down to the CCP. It doesn’t matter what the commentators in the west think, it’s what the people of China know to be true that matters.
Welcome to the party Ireland. Be prepared for some economic pushback from the CCP bullies but standing up to bullies is always the best way to go.
@TonyB: China stood up to the bullying of Impearlist powers and won.
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