Russia demands NATO roll back from East Europe and stay out of ...

"We will not compromise the key principles on which European security is built, including that all countries have the right to decide their own future and foreign policy, free from outside interference," she said.NATO diplomats told Reuters that Russia cannot have a veto on further expansion of the alliance and NATO has the right to decide its own military posture."Russia is not a member of NATO and doesn't decide on matters related to NATO," Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lukasz Jasina said.Ukraine's foreign ministry said Kyiv had an "exclusive sovereign right" to run its own foreign policy, and only it and NATO could determine the relationship between them, including the question of Ukrainian membership.It urged Moscow to re-engage with a peace process in eastern Ukraine, where some 15,000 people have been killed in a seven-year conflict between Ukrainian government troops and Russian-backed separatists.'SMOKESCREEN'Some Western political analysts suggested Russia was knowingly presenting unrealistic demands which it knew would not be met to provide a diplomatic distraction while maintaining military pressure on Ukraine."Something is very wrong with this picture, the pol(itical) side appears to be a smokescreen," Michael Kofman, a Russia specialist at Virginia-based research organization CNA, wrote on Twitter.Sam Greene, professor of Russian politics at King's College London, said President Vladimir Putin was "drawing a line around the post-Soviet space and planting a 'keep out' sign"."It's not meant to be a treaty: it's a declaration," he said.