US Senator Cotton: Russia's demand that NATO pull back troops makes talks a farce
Tom Cotton, the Republican chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, says further talks with Russia are a farce after Moscow demanded that NATO return to its 1997 positions. He called for helping Ukraine show that Putin cannot win.
Tom Cotton, the Republican chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, has said that further negotiations with Russia on ending the war in Ukraine are a farce. He was reacting to the Kremlin's demand that NATO countries withdraw their troops from their own borders. The senator made his remarks on X.
Cotton described the Russian demand as preposterous. He said Vladimir Putin had once again shown that he is not serious about a negotiated peace. In the senator's view, the Russian president will agree to stop the war only when he realises he cannot win. Cotton added that Ukraine must be helped to prove that point.
Background
The senator was commenting on a report by The New York Times. According to the newspaper, during talks in Abu Dhabi Russian officials presented a document that, among other things, demanded NATO, the North Atlantic military alliance, pull its forces back to the positions it held in 1997.
The demand nearly repeats, almost word for word, the position Moscow put forward in early 2022, two months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
