Explained | Can a Russia-Ukraine conflict be averted?

Why does President Putin consider NATO admitting more members as a threat? What role are the U.S. and other countries playing to de-escalate the situation?

Russia has mobilised some 1,00,000 troops on its border with Ukraine. Russia says the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s eastward expansion (which the alliance calls “enlargement”) threatens its interests and has sought written security guarantees from the West. The crisis has unleashed a flurry of diplomatic moves with the U.S., NATO and the European Union holding talks with Russian officials.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded a ban on further expansion of NATO to include Ukraine, Georgia or other countries in Russia’s neighbourhood. Since the German unification in 1990, NATO has added new members five times. If the alliance had 12 founding members in 1949, it now has 30 members, including the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — all sharing borders with Russia — and Hungary, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, all members of the former Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.