US, NATO offered Russia disarmament measures, leaked response shows

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - The US and NATO will not budge on Russia’s request to forbid Ukraine from entering the Western security alliance but have offered to negotiate on disarmament, according to leaked documents obtained by Spanish daily El Pais.

El Pais reported that it accessed two confidential documents sent last Wednesday by the US government and NATO to Moscow, which detail the ongoing negotiations around the Ukraine crisis.

In the responses, the US and NATO both shut down Moscow’s two key requests.

One was to ban Ukraine from entering NATO, and the other to sign an agreement on security in Europe that Russia had already drafted.

However, the allied forces have offered to negotiate disarmament and other security proposals in exchange for Russia pulling back its around 100,000 soldiers from around the Ukraine border.

“It is the position of the United States government that progress can only be achieved on these issues in an environment of de-escalation with respect to Russia’s threatening actions towards Ukraine,” read the American response to Moscow.

A number of US proposals suggest agreeing to more limits on missiles, non-strategic arms and undeployed nuclear warheads.

The US also offers Russia a “transparency mechanism” that would allow Russia to verify the absence of Tomahawk cruise missiles at NATO bases in Romania and Bulgaria.

Yet, for this to occur, US officials would also want to verify Russia’s missile capacity at two Russian bases of their choice, according to the documents.

The NATO and US responses were similar but contained some small differences. For instance, the Biden administration said it was open to discussing the concept of “indivisibility of security,” while NATO did not.

El Pais said Moscow is calling for the two negotiating parties to unify their responses.