Moscow will end the war in Ukraine after NATO withdraws troops from the Baltic states, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has told state news agency TASS.
In an excerpt quoted by Newsweek on Monday, Ryabkov claimed the so-called root cause of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was NATO’s expansion to the east.
The official responsible for talks with the United States has seemingly returned to the Kremlin’s pre-2022 ultimatum for NATO to withdraw to its 1997 borders.
Before the full-scale invasion, the Kremlin issued an ultimatum, calling on Ukraine to disarm, abandon its NATO aspirations, and for the alliance to withdraw troops from the Baltic states and Eastern Europe.
Baltic officials and observers say this could have paved the way for a potential Russian aggression against Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
NATO has deployed multinational battalions in the three countries as part of the deterrence package agreed following Russia's aggression against Ukraine in 2014. The number of troops has been bolstered following the 2022 invasion.
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