I'm John Batchel with my colleague Anatole Levin of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the director of the Eurasia program.

We're looking at the conversation in Riyadh that happened several days ago between, importantly, the Secretary of State, Mr. Rubio, and the Foreign Minister of the Russian

Federation, Sergei Lavrov. The headline in the Financial Times this morning speaking to that

conversation, Russia asked U.S. for NATO withdrawal from Eastern Europe, And this, according to Romania,

I mentioned that the Romanian Prime Minister

attended the second day meeting in Paris with Mr. Macron.

Perhaps he is influencing this headline.

But in any event, what does that mean?

Romania is part of the Black Sea Basin. Romania is on the front

lines. It shares a border with Ukraine, not only Ukraine, but the Odessa Oblast, which theoretically is

part of Nova Rasea, although not now under attack routinely. It also is a budding Moldova that is constantly fearful of a Russian

takeover. Anatole, please help me understand. Withdraw from Eastern Europe by NATO, that sounds

like surrender. Is it meant to be? Well, that's not entirely accurate.

What the Russians are asking for is not that the countries should leave NATO because they

won't and will be expelled from NATO, obviously, if it were talking about Poland and the

Central Europeans.

What they're asking for is that NATO return to the promise it made when NATO expanded in the 1990s that NATO would expand,

but American and West European troops would not be deployed in the new members.

And the Russians thought that was nailed down in the conventional forces in Europe treaty,

which, however, the Clinton and then the Bush administrations refused to ratify.

So the Russians want to go back to that.

But of course, to put it mildly, a lot

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