Signal No. 188 · Kremlin readout: Moscow asks for NATO’s 1997 force posture

The US envoys went to Moscow to ask Vladimir Putin to move the Europeans from the sidelines of the talks to the table, and the Kremlin answered with terms. Jared Kushner had said beforehand that he hoped Putin would “give the blessing” for Europeans to join. In the Kremlin, Steve Witkoff said he hoped to announce the next three-way meeting; leaving Moscow, he said another meeting was agreed and, of the Europeans, “They are our partners and it’s important to us that they take part”, which several reports read as saying they will join it. The Kremlin’s account does not say so. Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov said the Europeans “must decide whether they want peace or the continuation of the war”, and that so far their actions point to war. He then listed what Russia wants from a new European security system: no further NATO enlargement, no weapons Russia considers threatening near its borders, and “a return to the configuration of the alliance’s forces as it stood when the NATO–Russia Founding Act was signed”, in May 1997. Germany’s brigade in Lithuania, the allied battlegroups from Estonia to Bulgaria and the US forces in Poland all arrived after 1997.

Ushakov cited the draft treaties Russia put to the United States and NATO in December 2021 and said Moscow was ready to start at once “in tandem with American representatives”; he hoped European states would “support” that work. Putin rejected the order Berlin set out on Wednesday, when the government spokesman listed four principles he said Europeans, Washington and Kyiv had agreed: peace in Ukraine first and Europe’s order second; Ukraine as part of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture; consensus among all NATO members; and no side agreements. They were being conveyed to Putin, he said, and Berlin expected a response. In remarks the Kremlin published, he attributed the reverse to Donald Trump, “as far as I understood”: “President Trump proposes: let us agree on instruments for ensuring security in Europe as a whole.” The Europeans answer “only after peace in Ukraine” and then plan to send troops there, he said, which Russia would treat as “a legitimate target”. Kushner told him the Americans had started a conversation with the Europeans about long-term security between Russia, Ukraine and Europe. Putin and Trump will continue at the APEC summit in Shenzhen, Ushakov said, and the Abu Dhabi talks go on.

In Dublin, at the summit of the 47-member European Political Community, Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, restated the sequence: ceasefire, settlement, then the architecture, which “we already have”. António Costa, closing the summit as president of the European Council, said the future of European security “cannot be discussed and decided without Europe”. A draft declaration initiated by France’s foreign minister, seen by Reuters, has about 40 states say that any question of European security is settled only with the Europeans. Friedrich Merz said Russia had yet to agree to joint talks and named the E3 as a format that works; Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said a single European representative was a precondition for Europe joining the talks. Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the summit that when Americans and Russians talk about security they mean “some new security model between Europe and Russia”.

Ukraine’s military satellite link has been slowed again, four weeks after the cap that Kyiv said cost it interceptions in October. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday, after reports from his defence minister and commander-in-chief, that units had recorded speed limits on Starshield at 161 kilometres an hour for several days, along the whole front and over occupied territory. Interceptor drones carrying the terminals cannot catch jet-powered Shahed drones at that speed, he said, and “there are already hits”. Overnight Russia launched 123 Shahed-type drones, 73 of them jet-powered, by the Ukrainian Air Force’s count.

October’s cap applied to military terminals in motion wherever they were. Service returned on 24 October and nobody took responsibility: Elon Musk said limits are decided by the US military and the president, and Donald Trump said the United States had imposed none. The Daily Telegraph later reported, citing four sources, that Musk proposed the limits; one of them said Trump agreed. This time Zelenskyy describes a zone. The limits appear on Ukrainian territory under occupation, he told the European Political Community summit in Dublin; the jet drones fly from there, and near the front only interceptor drones can work, because aircraft cannot. “If someone in America takes decisions that in effect treat Ukrainian territory as if it did not belong to Ukraine, that tells us where all this is heading.”

Kyiv has asked Washington for an explanation and knows “very little”, Zelenskyy said. The Pentagon and the White House did not immediately respond to Reuters; SpaceX declined to comment. Ukraine’s contract with the US government for Starshield expires next year, its chargé d’affaires in Washington has said, and Kyiv wants talks on a new one.

The Bundestag budget committee approved new jamming vehicles for the army on Wednesday, in a package that is mostly information technology. The defence ministry published the decisions on Thursday; it lists four projects and gives no values. They are an amendment to the Herkules follow-on contract with BWI, the Bundeswehr’s federally owned IT provider; an AI-supported tool for collecting and analysing open-source information, which BWI will run; a protected system for jamming enemy communications, to replace the Hummel and Hornisse vehicles; and US-made radios, mainly for special forces, bought through Foreign Military Sales. The jammer is to work against communications and data links and against satellite- and radio-based systems. It will be mounted on the Piranha V 8x8 in a programme the Netherlands leads under the name Knifefish; Denmark has joined and Switzerland decided in October to join, on the same vehicle.

People familiar with the session count five submissions worth a little over EUR 2.5 billion. About EUR 1.7 billion is the 15th amendment to the open-ended Herkules follow-on framework, for running the Bundeswehr’s IT and for further orders for its data-centre network. About EUR 400 million buys around 20 jamming vehicles in two variants, two-thirds for the VHF and UHF bands and one-third for HF, with Hensoldt as prime contractor and delivery in 2031 and 2032. The radios, more than 1,000 of them, cost just under EUR 60 million, and the open-source tool, Internet Reconnaissance, just over EUR 50 million. The fifth submission, absent from the ministry’s notice, raises the ceiling of a framework agreement with KNDS Deutschland Mission Electronics for hardened IT components from EUR 250 million to more than EUR 1 billion and approves a call-off of over EUR 350 million, partly for vehicles being fitted with the army’s digital radio.

Germany needs almost EUR 800 million more for the Eurodrone, the long-endurance surveillance drone that Airbus is developing under a four-nation contract with Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The finance ministry’s amended draft of the 2027 budget, which the Bundestag budget committee took up on Thursday, adds EUR 291.3 million for 2027 to the procurement title and raises its commitment authority for later years by EUR 507.6 million, to about EUR 1.16 billion. The note gives the reason in one line: an “additional requirement due to design optimisation and adjustment of the cost-sharing key”.

OCCAR, the European armaments cooperation agency, runs the programme under a 2022 contract for 20 systems of three aircraft each: seven systems for Germany, five for Italy, four each for France and Spain. France took the Eurodrone out of its revised military programming law in April. Dassault Aviation, one of the three major subcontractors named in the contract, left in the summer; in July its chief executive told the French Senate that Airbus had told the company “to get out”. The German group Liebherr is said to be taking over much of Dassault’s role. The same amended draft cuts frigates and the tactical data network, as reported on Wednesday.

The rule behind this week’s reports on Chinese drones is a directive of 2 November, and it is written against a list, not against China. Signed by Major General Ruprecht von Butler, deputy head of the defence ministry’s armed forces directorate, it says small commercial drones and their components are to be bought “exclusively from safe states”, Augen geradeaus reports from the text. States that are not safe are those on the interior ministry’s Staatenliste, its list of states with particular security risks. The list was last revised in June 2022 and names 26 states, among them Russia, China and Ukraine, so Ukrainian drones are excluded too, the blog notes. The 2023 order that first restricted commercial drones used the same category and said it then meant only China.

About 1,500 small commercial drones reached the force through framework agreements, the directive says, and that contingent was used up by the end of 2025; a follow-on arrangement is needed until military small drones arrive in larger numbers from the end of 2026. Drones already bought may still be flown, and new ones will be bought centrally, with just under EUR 11 million budgeted this year and just under EUR 15 million next year. Colonel Mitko Müller, the ministry’s spokesman, said on Wednesday that there is no “ban or blanket prohibition” on technology from particular countries or makers and that the Chinese models bought with commanders’ discretionary funds “will now gradually go out of use”. On cars, he said local security officers may bar connected vehicles from sensitive areas by type, whatever the maker.