Written response

Biden admin to send Russia written responses as soon as Wednesday

By Kylie Atwood and Jennifer Hansler

The Biden administration is set to send Russia a written response to concerns Moscow has publicly released and US proposals on a path forward as soon as Wednesday, according to administration officials, but the response is unlikely to characterize the likelihood of Ukraine joining NATO in the short term or show any room for negotiation on NATO's open door policy -- which is Russian President Vladimir Putin's central grievance.

"I think for a couple reasons that is not the kind of thing I would expect to see in any written response from the United States," State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said on Tuesday when asked if the US would be including a characterization of the likelihood or not of Ukraine joining NATO, which US President Joe Biden did during public remarks last week.

The proposal will lay out the general areas where the US is willing to work with Russia, which US officials have already clearly identified: arms control, greater transparency, risk reduction and the placement of missile systems. The details will go "slightly deeper" than what the US has said publicly, explained senior administration officials.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier Wednesday that depending on the content of this response, which he said is "expected this week," Russian officials will prepare "proposals for the president [Putin] regarding our next steps."

US officials believe that the ideas they formalize in written form could prompt negotiations with Russia, but said that would only happen if Putin decides he wants to engage. The Biden administration has said the response will be shared with Russia at some time this week, coming as Russia continues to build up its military presence along Ukraine's borders.

The purpose of providing the response in written form -- a demand Russia has made since they put written ideas forward in December -- is to fuel the diplomacy that the US hopes will deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine, State Department officials said.

"When the Russians came back and said you need to put this in writing, the understanding on our side as we thought about was OK, if this allows the ultimate decision-maker in Russia to look at the ideas and decide whether to move forward, it's in our interest, our shared interest among the US, its European allies and partners, to proceed and really test if they're moving forward on the diplomatic track," a senior State Department official told reporters after Secretary of State Antony Blinken's meeting with Lavrov in Geneva. "We're taking this step by step, but we don't want to be the ones to foreclose the possible diplomatic solution."

The US does not plan to make the proposal public, but US officials acknowledge that there is a high possibility that Russia publishes the full document after receiving it.

The US has been consulting with allies, including Ukraine, over the last few weeks as they have been developing their proposal. That is one reason the US is not providing the written response until now, administration officials said.

"We have been consulting extensively with our allies and our partners, and of course when it comes to the latter category, that includes Ukraine," Price said on Tuesday. "We have not only informed them and given them a preview of what will be in this report, but we have actually explicitly solicited their feedback and incorporated that feedback into our report. So there will be no surprises. There will be no surprises for NATO. There will be no surprises for our European allies. There will be no surprises for our Ukrainian partners."

But some allies and experts are skeptical of how much emphasis should be put on this document from the US, given it is not expected to give room for negotiation on Russia's key demands, and there is concern that Moscow will use the US response as a pretext to say diplomacy has failed.

The senior State Department official acknowledged that such "pessimism may be right, but it's do you see the glass as half full or half empty, and if you think there's any opportunity to have this end through some sort of diplomatic negation, we're going to try that and see if there's space for that."

Blinken said in Geneva that US and Russian officials would meet again after the written proposal was transmitted to Russia.