According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the Russian leadership it is deploying more and more troops to Ukraine's borders and continues to build an “unprovoked and inexplicable” army in the region. “We see that Russia is gradually withdrawing more and more forces – artillery, infantry, tanks – on the border with Ukraine, ignoring international calls for transparency and de-escalation,” he said in Brussels on December 21.
Stoltenberg plans to convene a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in early 2022 to discuss the tense situation, but it is not yet clear whether the Kremlin is ready to take part in such consultations, DW said. Attempts to set a new date failed because Moscow refused to discuss the Ukrainian problem in this format, and on December 21 the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it was ready to consider convening a NATO-Russia Council, provided that the West responded to Moscow's proposals in security sphere.