Russia says West will face new Cuban missile crisis unless its demands to NATO are met

A Moscow official compared its current standoff with NATO over neighboring Ukraine as a new Cuban missile crisis, according to an interview published Monday.

Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov made the comment to Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn magazine, and insisted he was not exaggerating.

“No, not too much,” Ryabkov said when asked if comparing Russia’s border conflict to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was “too much.” The standoff that year over the deployment of U.S. missiles in parts of Europe and the Soviet Union's in Cuba is considered the closest the two sides came to direct military conflict, including the possibility of a nuclear war, during the nearly half-century long Cold War.

The magazine article came out amidst a new round of military exercises by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops. There are concerns war could erupt between Russia and its U.S.- and NATO-allied neighbor, Ukraine.

Moscow has expressed concerns about NATO expanding east into Ukraine, specifically over the potential of missile systems being set up in a neighboring country or worse, Ukraine joining NATO. Ryabkov restated these demands during his interview.

“We must put an end to the expansion of NATO, NATO infrastructure, NATO capabilities further east,” he insisted. “We must exclude Ukraine from joining NATO.”

And Ryabkov appeared to rule out any compromise on its demands for these security guarantees, saying it would be “shameful for Russia to meet Western ultimatum demands halfway.”

“We can no longer postpone, let's deal with this serious issue … here and now,” he warned.

Ryabkov’s statements and the military exercises are the latest in Moscow’s escalations against the West, who was accused last week of reversing flow of a key gas pipeline away from Europe for political reasons. Putin has recently amassed more than 100,000 troops to the border it shares with the former Soviet bloc country and the annexed peninsula of Crimea.  

Russia has been warned by Western leaders against military action, including President Joe Biden, who threatened “substantive economic countermeasures” meant to inflict “significant and severe economic harm on the Russian economy” if it decided to invade Ukraine. However, Biden told reporters shortly afterward he was not considering deploying troops to the area.