Russia’s Abu Dhabi demands: Finland leaving NATO, no Baltic bases

At talks with Ukraine and the U.S. in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday and Wednesday, Russia put forward a plan for a new security architecture that, according to a German tabloid, calls for Finland to leave NATO and for the alliance to close its bases in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. European representatives took part indirectly, and the plan reportedly reached them too.

What Moscow’s plan proposes

Under the plan, Ukraine would never join NATO, though EU membership would not be ruled out. Russia would get the territories it currently occupies and all of the Donbas, even though it does not fully control it: Ukraine still holds more than twenty percent of the Donetsk region and about half a percent of the Luhansk region. Moscow also proposes demilitarizing Mykolaiv and Odesa so that Ukraine cannot use them as bases. Agreements on freedom of navigation in the Black and Baltic seas are also envisaged.

Moldova would be turned into a federal republic made up of Moldova itself, Gagauzia and the Russian-occupied Transnistria. If the country joins the EU, Transnistria and Gagauzia would get the right to hold independence referendums.

In return, the report says, Russia offered to withdraw nuclear weapons from Belarus and drop plans to station intermediate-range missiles there: Russia has deployed Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Belarus. Moscow is also said to be ready to pull several thousand troops out of Transnistria.

The Kremlin: nothing of the kind was raised

The paper stressed that this is only one of several proposals discussed in “unofficial negotiating circles,” and it is unclear whether Vladimir Putin backs it. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked at a briefing whether Russia had proposed that Finland leave NATO, answered, as quoted by the Interfax agency: “I don’t know about that. No, nothing like that was raised. It was certainly not discussed, of course.”

Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov said on Friday that Russia had already outlined a new security architecture in December 2021. He named the key points as NATO’s expansion, the deployment of weapons systems near Russia’s borders that threaten it, and a return to the alliance’s force configuration at the time the NATO–Russia Founding Act was signed. According to him, Russia wants to add further proposals based on lessons from the “current situation,” but he did not say which.

The Founding Act was signed in Paris in May 1997. If Russia’s demands were met, NATO would return to its 1997 borders, which would also affect the Czech Republic, which joined the alliance two years later.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz