Europe | Teetering at the summit

Russia and the West meet for a crucial week of diplomacy

Even as they talk, both sides are preparing for war

Jan 15th 2022

AS RUSSIAN TANKS poured west, heading from Vladivostok on the Pacific coast to the border with Ukraine, American diplomats headed east. Not since the Balkan wars of the 1990s has Europe seen a week of such crucial security summitry. On January 10th American diplomats met Russian ones in Geneva. Two days later the NATO-Russia Council convened in Brussels. On January 13th the diplomats headed to Vienna for a gathering of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a group of 57 countries.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Teetering at the summit”