🇷🇺🇺🇦🇵🇱🇪🇪🇱🇻🇱🇹🇫🇮‼️ PUTIN WANTS NATO PUSHED BACK TO ITS 1997 POSITION AS PART OF UKRAINE PEACE TALKS, potentially demanding the withdrawal of allied forces from Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland, according to The Telegraph. The report suggests that Moscow intends to use the next round of negotiations over Ukraine to seek concessions that would weaken NATO’s defensive presence in Eastern Europe. Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov has called for European countries to participate in discussions involving Russia, Ukraine and the United States, arguing that no lasting settlement can be reached without them. However, diplomatic sources told The Telegraph that Moscow’s underlying objective is to reopen negotiations over NATO enlargement, which Putin has repeatedly described as a root cause of the war. The Kremlin is reportedly seeking a return to the alliance’s 1997 military posture, before NATO’s major eastward expansion. Such demands could affect allied deployments in Poland, the Baltic states and Finland, which joined NATO in 2023. Russia has agreed to participate in another round of U.S.-mediated trilateral technical talks in Abu Dhabi next month, although Ushakov has described the upcoming meeting as a preliminary round and expressed little expectation of significant progress. Previous negotiations failed to produce a ceasefire, with Moscow continuing to demand that Ukraine surrender the remaining Ukrainian-controlled territory in Donbas. According to Ushakov, the Kremlin had expected Washington to pressure Kyiv into accepting concessions following Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska, but those expectations have not materialized. European and Ukrainian officials have reportedly indicated that they are prepared to discuss broader postwar European security arrangements. The proposal was conveyed to Putin by U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff during a three-hour meeting in St. Petersburg. The reported NATO withdrawal demands remain potential Russian negotiating objectives, rather than an agreed framework. 🔥 The implications extend far beyond Ukraine. A rollback of NATO’s eastern military presence would directly affect the security arrangements of countries bordering Russia and could weaken the alliance’s ability to reinforce its eastern flank. Moscow appears to be seeking concessions through diplomacy that it has been unable to secure through its war against Ukraine. For NATO members, the central issue is whether negotiations intended to end one war could result in security arrangements that increase their vulnerability to future Russian military pressure. See the latest updates with us: @NSTRIKE1231