First round of US-Russia security talks ends amid war fears

Diplomats from Russia and the US wrapped up their first round of high- stakes addresses over the Kremlin’s broad security demands amid the trouble of a Russian irruption of Ukraine that’s provoked the worst pressures since the Cold War.

Thw two sides slated separate briefings for after Monday after a full day of accommodations between US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in Geneva. Both sides had expressed caution about the outlook for the accommodations before they started.

Russia is averring on fairly- binding guarantees of a halt to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization blowup and an end to the alliance’s military presence in eastern and central European nations that joined the bloc since 1997. TheU.S. has dismissed that as unrealistic, offering rather to dock bullet deployments and exercises in the region.

Russia has amassed further than colors near Ukraine, egging warnings in Washington and Kyiv of the threat of an irruption into theex-Soviet neighbor. The Kremlin denies it’s planning to attack, but says it’s responding to increased NATO exertion on its borders and the trouble of a Ukrainian descent against Russian- backed secessionists in the eastern Donbas region. Ukraine has rejected allegations of any planned irruption.

The US and its abettors have hovered to put chastising warrants on Russia if it invades.

The addresses in Geneva were the first of three sets of accommodations taking place this week. There will be Russian consultations with NATO in Brussels on Wednesday and conversations in Vienna under the frame of the 57- nation Organization for Security andCo-Operation in Europe a day latterly.

Over the weekend, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had played down the possibility of any immediate “ improvements.” Chairpersons Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin decided last month to make a major politic drive to resolve their differences.

Russia, which in 2014 adjoined the Ukrainian promontory of Crimea and brewed a standoff in Donbas which has claimed lives so far, is fiercely opposed to the NATO intentions of Ukraine and anotherex-Soviet state, Georgia.

The US and its European abettors are agitating a range of retaliatory measures if Putin does foray Ukraine, including cutting off Russia from Swift, the transnational payments system, limiting Russian banks’ capability to convert currencies and assessing import controls on advanced technologies used in aeronautics, semiconductors and other factors, as well as computers and other consumer goods in further extreme scripts.

But concern among some big European nations about profitable fallout raises the threat of a split with the US on how explosively to hit Russia with warrants if it stages aggression against Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter.