Being prepared to accept Russia’s requests to rule out NATO expansion closer to its borders would be an unprecedented loss of dignity for the US and the military bloc, Ukraine has said as tensions grow between the West and Moscow.
In an interview with RBK Ukraine published on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said he doubts American officials or the organization “will agree to Russia’s demand to stop enlarging eastwards.”
“Not only is there a call for NATO to not expand, there is also an insistence to end [its] military presence in member states,” he said. “I don’t believe that [they will accept] because to agree to such demands in any form would be the greatest humiliation of the US and NATO in history” since the bloc’s founding.
Responding to why Moscow published the proposals, Kuleba said that “diplomacy has a term – the ‘madman strategy.’ That is, to demonstrate to your partner that you are mad, ready to do anything, unpredictable, and therefore you must be approached with special pliability and tenderness.”