‘Little ground for optimism’: Kremlin says U.S. document doesn’t meet Russian security demands

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that he would not make public the details of the written response, but he insisted that Washington had not reversed its positions on Moscow’s major requests: that NATO pull back its presence in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, and that Ukraine and Georgia be permanently barred from joining the military alliance.

“Without going into the specifics of the document, I can tell you that it reiterates what we’ve said publicly for many weeks and, in a sense, for many years,” Blinken said at a news conference. “That we will uphold the principle of NATO’s ‘open door,’ and that’s … a commitment that we’re bound to.”

Following a meeting with Lavrov in Geneva last Friday, Blinken pledged to present Russia with a written record of Washington’s concerns about Moscow’s behavior and proposals to end the security situation sometime this week. U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan delivered the document to Moscow on Wednesday.