For weeks Putin had said little publicly about the crisis sparked by Russia’s buildup of tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine’s borders, which has raised fears of a possible invasion.
But speaking at a Tuesday news conference following a five-hour meeting in Moscow with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the Putin said: “It is already clear — I informed the Prime Minister about this — that the fundamental Russian concerns were ignored. We did not see an adequate consideration of our three key requirements.”
Putin added that Russia had not seen “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 of 1997, when the Russia-NATO founding act was signed.”
The US and NATO have said Putin’s demands — which include a promise to never expand eastward to countries including Ukraine — violate NATO’s open-door policy and are non-starters in negotiations.
Putin ended the news conference with a short lecture about what he characterized as NATO’s history of deceptions, claiming that the alliance promised to expand “not an inch” eastward. “They said one thing, they did another,” Putin said. “As people say, they screwed us over, well they simply deceived us.”
Russian officials have repeatedly made this claim in the past; the US and NATO have denied making such promises.
Putin also reiterated his opposition to the possibility of Ukrain joining NATO, and said Kyiv was attempting to retake Crimea — the Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia in 2014 — by military force, potentially bringing the alliance into open conflict with Russia.
“This [Crimea] is sovereign Russian territory, the question is closed for us,” he said. “Let’s imagine that Ukraine is a NATO country and starts these military operations. Then what, we should fight against the NATO bloc? So, has anyone thought about this? Looks like no.”
Diplomats from the US, Russia, Ukraine, NATO and the European Union have been engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent weeks.
On Tuesday, however, the Kremlin said that Russia had not yet sent its “main reply” to the US. “There was a mix-up,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call. “It [the Russian correspondence] regarded a different matter. The main reply on this issue hasn’t been handed over, it’s still being prepared.”
