EU Urges Role in the Upcoming Russia-US Security Guarantee Talks Over Ukraine Crisis

The European Union wants a role in the upcoming talks on security guarantees between Russia, the United States, and NATO. According to a report, EU officials have expressed dissatisfaction with the way upcoming negotiations with Russian officials were set up, with counterparts from the US and NATO to discuss the security of Ukraine and the entire European continent.

They said that, while the US has maintained tight touch with Brussels and individual EU member states, it has not attempted to change Moscow's proposed security assurances agreements, Republic World reported.

EU wants a place in Ukraine crisis talks

The charges come after EU Foreign Policy Chief Josip Borrel stated that Brussels will not be able to remain an impartial observer in future debates over Europe's security architecture.

Borrel remarked last month that Russia's ultimate aims are unknown, saved from threatening and weakening Ukraine. "Various possibilities are imaginable," Borrell wrote on his blog, "and we can't rule out Russia's willingness to use the crisis as leverage for its stated objective of altering Europe's security framework while simultaneously excluding Europeans from the conversation."

Per Newsweek via MSN, the EU has mainly been a bystander in the diplomatic buzz around Russia's military buildup on Ukraine's border; this reveals a deeper source of dissatisfaction in Brussels. While being a major global economic powerhouse, the EU's strategic geopolitical presence is disproportionately tiny.

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin have spoken twice in the last month, ahead of two days of talks in Geneva between senior US and Russian officials beginning Sunday. The US has told its European partners that it would not make any side agreements with Putin without their consent, and they have stepped in lockstep, threatening Russia with crippling penalties if it invades.

Borrell paid a visit to Ukrainian soldiers at the Stanitsa Luganskaya border between Ukraine and territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the Luhansk area to demonstrate the EU's commitment to Kyiv. The violence in Ukraine's east has killed over 14,000 people and decimated the country's industrial heartland, known as the Donbas since Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and backed a separatist revolt.

Since it lacked the political ability to develop a significant defense and security component in its common agenda, the EU has championed the ideals of diplomacy's so-called soft power of economic and non-military help for years. Even on its own continent, it has struggled to establish itself as a key actor.

Putin threatens to abandon Ukraine with severe gas threat to EU

On Tuesday, European gas prices soared over 30% as ongoing poor supply from Russia stoked fears of an energy crisis. The Russian President has redirected gas flow to the East through the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which ordinarily transports gas to the West, for the sixteenth day in a row, Express.co.

Meanwhile, worries of a Russian invasion of Ukraine have heightened tensions with the West, following claims of 100,000 Russian troops massing on the Russia-Ukraine border.

The United States has expressed its opposition to Russia's possible military aggressiveness and looks ready to intervene. "President Biden made clear that the United States and its friends and partners would respond firmly if Russia continues to attack Ukraine," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

However, Dr. Thomas O'Donnell of the Hertie School of Governance, a geopolitical expert, claims that Russia's influence over global gas supply may preclude the US from supporting Ukraine. He said that because the West still relies heavily on Russia for gas supply, Putin has a geostrategic edge and can achieve what he wants without succumbing to EU and US pressure.

Nord Stream 2 is a newly constructed gas pipeline that will carry gas from Russia to Germany without traveling via Ukraine or Poland. It has been beset by delays, and Putin has been accused of stifling Europe's gas supply in order to hasten its certification.