Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, had a combative session yesterday at the UN Security Council amid attempts to de-escalate the Ukraine crisis. However, the Security Council session was more of a show of diplomatic strength than an attempt to narrow the gap between Russia and the West.

Nebenzya slammed the West’s claims of an ‘impending Russian attack’ as “hysterics”, and warned Ukraine of attempts to sabotage the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015: “If our western partners push Kiev to sabotage the Minsk agreements, something that Ukraine is ... willingly doing, then that might end in the absolute worst way for Ukraine, and not because somebody has destroyed it, but because it would have destroyed itself and Russia has absolutely nothing to do with this.”

Russian permanent representative at the UN also blamed the West for “actively pumping Ukraine full of weapons”.

For her part, the US’ envoy, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, rehashed past claims, and said that Russia is adding more troops to the 100,000 already amassed at its Western borders, and would have an additional 30,000 inside Belarus in a few days’ time.

Ukraine’s envoy spoke towards the end of the session, and did not echo statements by his President Volodymyr Zelensky that the West was exaggerating the threat. Instead, the envoy echoed the US’ statement, and discussed the troops being amassed at Russia’s Western border and inside Belarus, and their equipment.

Russian and US officials are still in talks over de-escalation. The US state department confirmed that it received a response from Moscow, however, US officials would not disclose the contents of the Russian letter, saying they would not "negotiate in public"

Russia's situation

Moscow stated on Friday that if its demands are not met regarding NATO's military expansion into the East and the attempts to include Ukraine into the Organization, it will resort to a "military-technical" solution, but it has repeatedly denied any intention of invading Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that negotiations with the West on security guarantees are not over yet and Russia will not allow anyone to ignore its interests, maintaining that the West will not be able to evade the implementation of Moscow's conditions regarding the principle of indivisible security.

He added that the constructive points in the Western response to the security guarantees initiative depend on previous Russian proposals. He warned that Russia will take retaliatory measures in case no agreement is reached with the West on the principles of ensuring security in Europe.

He pointed out that he does not rule out the presence of sides who want to drag Kiev to war with Moscow, at a time when the former does not control part of its forces, stressing that the war will not erupt if this depends on Russia.