by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
On December 17, 2021, the Russian Foreign Ministry proposed two treaties of non-aggression and mutual assured security to stop the US and NATO alliance’s road to war against Russia.
This was the draft pact with the US; this was the draft pact with NATO. This is how to read them.
When the treaty provisions were summarily dismissed without discussion by the Biden Administration of the time and its NATO allies, the Russian special military operation against the US and NATO in the Ukraine was inevitable. It began sixty-nine days later.
Article 4 of the proposed treaty with NATO appeared to require the alliance to withdraw its territorial reach eastwards towards Russia to its borders at the cutoff date of May 27, 1997. “The Russian Federation and all the Parties that were member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997, respectively, shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997. With the consent of all the Parties such deployments can take place in exceptional cases to eliminate a threat to security of one or more Parties.”
This appeared to mean that Russia was insisting NATO withdraw to its borders of May 27, 1997. In practice, unless Moscow agreed in “exceptional cases”, this excluded the NATO members who have joined up since then — Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (2004); Albania and Croatia (2009); Montenegro (2017); and North Macedonia (2020).
Article 6 of the pact added the undertaking, as of the end of 2021: “All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.” Since then Finland joined NATO in 2022; Sweden followed in 2023.
The two draft treaties remain the Foreign Ministry’s, the General Staff’s, and President Vladimir Putin’s roadmap for the peace settlement with the US and NATO to follow the end-of-war armistice in the Ukraine. This has been repeated many times over.
On Monday this week, President Donald Trump and President Emmanuel Macron discussed a framework for what they called peace in Europe. This, they told the press, involved US military “backing” (Trump’s term) for a European “assurance force” (Macron’s term) deployed on Ukrainian territory in what the Russians are calling a demilitarized zone and the Europeans, a disengagement zone. Macron told Trump that British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer would confirm his backing when he meets Trump on Thursday.
The Financial Times, a Japanese-owned propaganda organ in London, attempted to change the meaning of the obvious. It reported a single anonymous “French official” to say “there was ‘no definitive agreement’ on the nature of US back-up in Ukraine given the discussions were at a preliminary stage.” The newspaper also recruited a retired French diplomat to add that Macron “did make progress on that front even if Trump remained quite elusive.”
Russian officials have repeatedly rejected the presence in these new Ukrainian zones of troops from the countries which have fought Russia on the battlefield since 2022. But the Russians also say that a compromise may be negotiable between the Russian framework of December 17, 2021, and the present positions of the Russian Army advancing towards the Dnieper River and of the US and NATO war staffs retreating to Lvov and Rzeszów, in Poland.
An essay by Yevgeny Krutikov, published this week in Vzglyad, the Kremlin-funded security analysis platform, suggests senior officials at the Security Council believe in the possibility of arms withdrawal from the current battlefield and of military deconfliction with Russia – without attempting the impossible, the dismantling of the NATO membership to the 1997 cutoff.
At its simplest, this would mean the withdrawal of American troops, long-range missiles and nuclear ordnance (bombs, missile warheads, targeting systems) to the lines of 1997. This would leave in place NATO security guarantees for the post-1997 member states and their territories, combined with Russian non-aggression guarantees.
Source: https://vz.ru/politics/2025/2/25/1316845.html
To the verbatim translation into English which follows, maps, links and captions have been added for clarification and illustration. Vzglyad’s writers have sanctioned the English language and writers in that language as hostile in the present war with the exception of those authorized by the Russian state media.
February 25, 2025
US relations with Russia promise a rollback to the period before Gorbachev
By Yevgeny Krutikov
The United States is preparing to eliminate its military presence in Europe, including Poland, the Baltic states and Kosovo, in order to normalize relations with Russia. At first, the news about this in the European media has looked like fakes, but now it appears too logical to ignore them. Is this a bluff or a real prospect of “detente”?
Citing an intelligence source in an Eastern European country, Bild claims that the United States is preparing to withdraw troops from Europe. More precisely, from those bases and positions which appeared there after the expansion of NATO to the east.
Source: https://www.bild.de/
“According to our information, we are talking about the Russian president’s demand for 2021, that is, the withdrawal of American troops from all NATO countries that joined the alliance after 1990,” the German magazine writes. And it wants to believe this.
The facilities from which the Americans are not discussing withdrawal are the bases in Ramstein, Germany, and the United Kingdom, which existed before the collapse of the USSR. But the largest American base in Europe after Ramstein, the Kosovo Bondsteel, is allegedly preparing for liquidation, and the Italian command of the peacekeeping forces in Kosovo (KFOR) inherits its infrastructure. Currently, American military personnel (just over 600 people) in Bondsteel are not part of KFOR, this is a purely American position.
In the near-sensational Bild article, it’s not so much the detail that matters as the message. This is the first (!) attempt to link President Trump’s rhetoric and plans with the creation of a new security configuration in Europe that would take into account Russia’s interests.
MAP OF US FORCES AND THEIR BASES IN EUROPE, 2022
Map as of January 2022: source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Trump himself has been talking about reducing the American military presence in Europe all the time – this has been one of his narratives since his inauguration, interspersed with demands for Europeans to “defend themselves on their own” — for example, to increase their own military spending and bring their armies to a combat-ready state.
For now, threats to withdraw the United States from NATO should be regarded as deceitful and frivolous. However, events are developing at such a pace that everything seems possible. This includes the rollback of the US military presence in Europe to the “basic settings” of the pre-Gorbachev period.
If the White House is really ready to discuss this with Moscow as part of the process of restoring normal relations between Russia and the United States, this is a truly revolutionary event for American foreign policy. In the light of such normalization, any other pales by comparison, including Trump’s decree that the United States now recognizes only two genders – male and female.
The simultaneous withdrawal of all American troops from Eastern Europe is a “horror story” that can be used for a variety of purposes: from attempts to influence the election campaign in Germany to fueling anti–Russian sentiment. And this “horror story” is being launched against the background of unprecedentedly harsh statements by the US authorities regarding Europe, of which the most memorable is the cavalier speech by Vice President J. D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference.
In this context, it is easy to believe the panicky rumours that the United States is abandoning Europe to its fate. For the last month, Europeans have been living uncomfortably under the “American umbrella.” But the fact is that the Italian military in Kosovo are indeed showing strange activity around Bondsteel.
Left: the US Bondsteel base in Kosovo; right, red dot marks the base location on the map.
Serbian sources also confirm the possible transfer of the base under the control of KFOR, which automatically means that the Americans will leave there. The Serbs, of course, are happy; when they are happy, the information coming from them should also be treated with reasonable skepticism. That is, something is definitely afoot in Kosovo, but it is not yet clear what exactly, and in what broader context this idea should be assessed.
It is noteworthy that the Bild source referred to a certain demand of Vladimir Putin from 2021. Most likely, this refers to the famous declaration of the Russian Foreign Ministry dated December 2021. No one has canceled or disavowed this document, and in theory it can indeed be on the negotiating table between the Russian Federation and the United States as a certain opening of Moscow’s diplomatic position.
Smolenskaya Square [location of the Russian Foreign Ministry comparable to Foggy Bottom for the US State Department] unequivocally claims that negotiations in Riyadh are underway not only around the Ukrainian issue, but also about the normalization or, if you want, reformatting of bilateral relations. This is not a “conference on Ukraine,” but Russian-American talks about everything.
Specifically, the Istanbul agreements may become the basis for negotiations on Ukraine, but in a broader context, we really need to talk about creating a configuration of continental security that would take into account Russia’s interests.
The main thing here is to take into account the threats posed to the Russian Federation by the current security organization in Europe, which has developed after the uncontrolled expansion of NATO to the east.
The problem is not only attempts to draw Ukraine or Georgia into the alliance – Trump himself calls this “involvement” a mistake which has worsened the situation on the continent. In a broader context, other examples of NATO expansion have posed a threat to the Russian Federation. The current borders and configuration of the alliance cannot be the basis for lasting peace for many years.
Roughly speaking, no one feels safe right now, and the source of these worries was and remains NATO as an outdated and decaying system.
In the Smolenskaya Square declaration of December 2021, the first paragraph states that the Russian Federation and the United States should act on the basis of the principles of “indivisible and equal security, without prejudice to each other’s security.” Further, this basic principle is specified in slightly less general terms, but, in fact, this is a proposal to take into account the security threats to the Russian Federation that stem from the expansion of NATO to the east.
Unfortunately, the Balts cannot be kicked out of NATO, which by the very fact of their presence, poisons any dialogue with the West. It is technically possible to dissolve the alliance, but such a prospect is not visible, especially since Europe in response will require the creation of some other scheme to ensure its interests. But to divert the immediate threat from Russia’s borders by eliminating the American military component in Eastern Europe sounds like something feasible — and possibly enough.
The entire infrastructure of NATO is based solely on the Americans. An apparent reduction by them would obviously disavow the threat that arose after the expansion of the alliance to the east.
A tank battalion of Germans with their families in Lithuania is, of course, unpleasant, but not critical. But the American Bondsteel base in Kosovo violates the security configuration because it threatens Serbia, that is, it is a source of tension, not an instrument to reduce it.
There is a special story with the so-called missile defence position area, which began to be created under President Barack Obama under the far-fetched pretext of “protecting Europe from Iran.” In this context, two American military installations – in Poland [Redzikowo] and Romania [Deveselu] – are also subject to withdrawal, along with radars and HIMARS.
MAP OF NUCLEAR ARMED AEGIS BASES IN EUROPE & CONTROL SYSTEMS
For analysis of Putin’s cross-hairs warnings on the Aegis-Ashore bases in Poland and Romania, read the archive.
It is quite possible that the rumours about a return to the “basic settings” in Europe are just rumours. However, if you think about it, this is a desirable scenario not only for Russia, but also for the United States, since it returns the situation to 1990; eliminates problematic issues of global security in Europe; and removes a considerable burden of responsibility from Washington.
Yes, no one is going to take out nuclear bombs and warheads from bases in the Netherlands and Belgium yet. But having achieved success on the first negotiating track, it is possible to move on to the almost forgotten negotiations on limiting nuclear weapons.
Thus, the German magazine could have lied, and it would do that.
However, in general, the concept of returning to the “basic settings” of security in Europe is very promising especially for the near future. Since such a configuration worked poorly during the Cold War, why not restore it if it really comes to a full-fledged “detente”, as Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon once did?
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