Is Ukraine about to have a war?

[ORAC]

https://www.ft.com/content/d86f8961-...e-8251ab139204

Russia demands Nato retract pledge to admit Ukraine and Georgia

Russia has demanded Nato withdraw a 2008 pledge to admit Ukraine and Georgia as part of future security talks that Washington hopes will deter Moscow from invading its southern neighbour.

The Russian foreign ministry on Friday published a list of proposed agreements that offer the most detailed insight so far into the “red lines” Vladimir Putin wants to form the basis of a new European security order.….

Nato’s then-secretary general said in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would one day become members but the alliance has never specified a timeline and has not entered either country into its formal process for membership.

The Russian foreign ministry said it wanted legal guarantees that the pledge was no longer in force, as well as other agreements that Nato would not deploy weaponry to countries bordering Russia, hold military drills beyond a certain distance from Russia, and setting maximum approach distances for ships in the Baltic and Black seas.

It also called on the US to readopt the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, a Cold War agreement banning land-based missiles with a range of 500km-5,500km from which the Trump administration withdrew in 2019.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, on Friday dismissed Putin’s demands as unsurprising. “It’s the same list of demands that the Russians have been advocating for and voicing for several months, if not years, and that is their prerogative,” she said.

Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, said Biden “clearly and directly . . . made no such commitments or concessions” regarding excluding Ukraine from Nato in his discussion earlier this week with Putin. “He stands by the proposition that countries should be able to freely choose who they associate with,” Sullivan said.

Senior US officials have also said Biden has made “very clear” that one nation cannot force another nation to change its border. “[One] nation cannot tell another to change its politics, and nations can’t tell others who they can work with,” a senior administration official told reporters on Thursday, after Biden spoke to Zelensky and, separately, nine Nato allies along its eastern flank…..