Washington holds key to unlock Ukraine crisis: China Daily editorial

The no-breakthrough-was-made telephone call on the Ukraine issue between US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Saturday has laid bare that it is the United States that is recklessly fueling the tensions.

Turning a deaf ear to Russia's demands for security, and ignoring Putin's head-on questioning of why his administration is fabricating and spreading rumors about an impending Russian "invasion" of Ukraine — Biden warned Western leaders that Russia would invade Ukraine around Feb 16 — the US leader has turned the "last-ditch" effort to secure peace on the Ukraine-Russia border into a grandstand for the US to condescendingly threaten and lecture Russia.

In saying that if Russia "invades" Ukraine, the US and its allies "will respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs on Russia", Biden scorned the opportunity to ease frictions.

Although the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's withdrawal from the whole of Eastern Europe may be a step too far, the other proposal of Moscow — not granting Ukraine a membership of the security bloc — is deserving of consideration if the US really wants to de-escalate tensions.

The two requirements — one represents a vision and the other a practical remedy for immediate concerns — fully indicates Moscow's sincerity and willingness to ease the deadlock.

But the US obviously doesn't want to reciprocate. Immediately after Biden and Putin talked on the phone, the US announced it was pulling most of its diplomats out of Ukraine, and urged its citizens to leave the country, prompting its allies to do the same, which directly heightened the tensions. Senior US officials are taking all available opportunities to impress the world that a war is imminent. It seems they not only know the time of Russia's attack but also know how it will be launched. Prescience that was notably lacking in Afghanistan.

Biden's mutual disarmament proposal was disingenuous since it essentially promoted the legitimacy and necessity of NATO's eastward expansion.

Ukraine is NATO's major objective in its expansion in Eastern Europe, and if Ukraine becomes a member of it, the organization, if not the US, can openly station troops at the door to the heartland of Russia.

And how will the US benefit from the disappearing of the last buffer zone between NATO and Russia? The Europeans will be forced to wean themselves from their reliance on natural gas from Russia, and cooperation between European countries and Russia will effectively come to an end. That will stifle the European Union's efforts to strive for diplomatic independence and reinforce Europe's reliance on the US for security and energy.

That will also strengthen the so-called value alliance that Biden has called on the two sides to build, which is in line with the US' Indo-Pacific strategy targeting China.

The retirement late last year of former German chancellor Angela Merkel, an ardent supporter of an independent Europe developing mutually beneficial relations with Russia and China, has paved the way for the US to intimidate the Europeans to wind back their clock to the Cold War, an endeavor stringed to US strategies on both sides of the Eurasian continent.