BEIJING, December 8. /TASS/. The talks between Russian and US president Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden could help to prevent an increase in tensions between the countries, according to an expert at the Global Issues Research Center of the Xinhua news agency.
Still, the countries hold opposite positions regarding the Ukraine issue, which has potential for a new crisis, the expert, Wang Chengcai, said in an interview with TASS.
"The talks between Putin and Biden are helping to prevent the escalation of tensions between Russia and the US, but their positions on the Ukrainian issue remain directly opposite," he said. "The problems around Ukraine and NATO's eastward expansion have the potential for a new crisis."
It’s important that the presidents were able to make good on their agreement to talk again before the end of the year, which they made during the summit in Geneva, the expert said. And now, they instructed their teams to cooperate on issues of concern in a sign that some cooperation will continue, he said.
That the presidents mentioned their countries were allied and suffered casualties in World War II sounded like a statement they didn’t want to go to war with each other, he said.
Moscow’s demands of legally binding guarantees against NATO’s eastward expansion are reasonable, he said, in light of Russia’s concerns about Kiev's provocative actions against Donbas and NATO’s use of Ukrainian territory for military purposes.
The expert said Russian-US relations sank to the lowest in 30 years and will take a long while to rebuild properly.
"The US continues to use NATO as the main tool to deter Russia while trying to turn Ukraine into an eternal irritant for Moscow," he said. If the US continues to push for NATO expansion, increasingly threatening Russia, then the countermeasures can’t fail to be robust, the expert said.