NATO and Russia are at odds over the Ukraine crisis.

BRUXELLES (AFP) – On Wednesday, NATO and Russia confronted their stark divide over European security, with the allies challenging President Vladimir Putin to withdraw troops from Ukraine and join talks to reduce the threat of open conflict.

Meeting with senior Kremlin envoys at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Western ambassadors said Moscow would have no veto over Ukraine or any other country joining the alliance, and warned that if it invaded, it would pay a high price.

“Russia, above all, will have to decide whether they are truly concerned about security, in which case they should engage, or whether this was all a ruse, in which case they may not even know,” Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State of the United States.

Sherman’s counterpart, deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko, agreed there had been no breakthrough and lamented that Russia and NATO had no “positive agenda — none at all.”

“The conversation was quite frank, direct, deep, and intense,” he said, “but it also revealed a large number of fundamental differences.”

Putin’s government has demanded that the West rule out accepting new members such as Ukraine, Georgia, or Finland on its eastern flank, as well as limits on allied deployments in former Soviet allies such as Poland and the Baltic states, which joined NATO after the Cold War.

Despite threatening massive economic sanctions if the Kremlin launches an invasion, Western allies have received no assurance that Russia will withdraw its forces, which Moscow insists pose no threat to its already-partially-occupied neighbour.

Instead, the 30 member states invited Russia’s envoys to return to Moscow and invited Putin to join them for a series of confidence-building talks on limiting provocative military exercises, arms control, and reciprocal limits on missile deployment.

“Russia was unable to reach an agreement on that proposal. They did not reject it either, but Russian representatives made it clear that they needed some time to respond to NATO “Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of the Alliance, issued a warning:

“On these issues, there are significant differences between NATO allies and Russia,” he warned.

Stoltenberg stated that NATO members would be unable to agree to Moscow’s core demands for a new security order in Europe, and that Russia would have no veto power over Ukraine’s eventual membership in the alliance.