Page 62 - bne magazine November 2021_20211104 uzbekistan risding

62 I Eastern Europe bne November 2021
Russia has been taking a hard line with the West since the start of this year.
Russia breaks off diplomatic
Nato have been in terminal decline for years.
While tension between Nato and Russia escalated dramatically following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014 and the outbreak of an undeclared war in the Ukraine’s western Donbas region, the Russian side has long complained that Nato broke promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev in the last years of the Soviet Union that Nato would not expand
“one inch” to the east.
Putin reiterated these claims at his famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 and has been more recently vindicated by declassified embassy cables and other Western docu- ments that confirm the promises were made verbally to Gorbachev by multiple Western leaders, including US Secretary of State James Baker and German chan- cellor Helmut Kohl, although nothing was ever put in writing.
From the Russian perspective the show-down with the West started even earlier in 2003, when the US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM missile treaty,
a key Cold War security agreement
that limits the deployment of short- range missiles.
Putin highlighted the US decision to pull out of the ABM treaty as a key problem only last week while being interviewed by a US journalist during the Russian Energy Week, which Putin said had set off an arms race between the US and Russia.
"The arms race is on the march, unfor- tunately. And it has started after the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty," the Russian president said as cited by Tass.
Putin said in 2003 that he had urged
the US not to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. "This is a fundamental thing, the cornerstone of global security. What is the ABM Treaty? This is not just protec- tion, it is an attempt to gain strategic advantages by de-energising the nuclear potential of a probable opponent, that is, ours," the Russian leader pointed out.
That was followed by the US-led “missile shield” in Europe to protect the EU from
ties with Nato
bne IntelliNews
Russia broke off diplomatic ties with Nato on October 18, expel- ling Nato’s diplomats at a liaison and communication office in Moscow and also ordering its representatives at Nato's HQ home by the end of the month.
Russia said it would halt the activities of its diplomatic mission to Nato after the Western military alliance expelled eight Russians on October 6 from its head- quarters, claiming they were spies.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said staff at Nato's military mission in Moscow would be stripped of their accreditation from November 1, and the alliance's information office in the Russian capital would be closed.
"If Nato members have any urgent mat- ters, they can contact our ambassador in Belgium on these questions," Lavrov told a news conference as cited by Reuters.
The Kremlin has taken a harder line in its international relations since the start of this year, when Lavrov laid out new rules of the game in a speech that said Russia would not accept the dual policy of sanctions attacks on one hand and
www.bne.eu
co-operation in things like business on the other.
The policy was launched by humiliating European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell during his visit to Moscow in February when three European diplo- mats were expelled while Lavrov was in a meeting with him.
Lavrov went on to say Russia was willing to break off diplomatic relations with the EU if it persisted in trying to inter- fere in Russia’s domestic affairs.
The break with Nato comes after there were hopes of some sort of rapproche- ment after Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden met
in Geneva on June 16 and appeared to strike a pragmatic compromise where Russia and the US could become “friene- mies”, co-operating on issues of mutual interest like arms controls and the fight against international terrorism, but would agree to disagree on things like Russia’s authoritarian regime.
Roots of the split
The breakdown in diplomatic ties comes as no real surprise, as relations with