Illustration: Liu Xidan/GT

According to Bloomberg, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, during his visit to the US, stated that "Brazil, China and India will face secondary sanctions from the US if Russia doesn't negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine," and urged these three countries to lean on Russia to agree to a ceasefire. NATO seems to be under the illusion that brandishing the threat of sanctions will compel other nations to fall in line with its agenda. Such threats are not only childish but also unrealistic.

The day before Rutte's remark, the US announced a new round of sanctions on Russia, declaring that if Moscow did not end the conflict within 50 days, the US would impose up to 100 percent secondary tariffs on countries purchasing Russian exports. Though Rutte's statements appear to represent NATO's position, they read more like a mouthpiece for the US, intended to align with American pressure on other countries, using economic sanctions to force Russia into a compromise.

However, this threat reflects the West's current sense of powerlessness in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Zhang?Hong, a research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that despite the Russia-Ukraine conflict lasting over three years, the West has imposed nearly 30,000 sanctions on Russia, but these measures have failed to change Moscow's stance. Instead, the war has dragged on longer and Ukraine has suffered great losses. When direct sanctions on Russia proved ineffective, the West turned to threatening secondary sanctions, attempting to pressure third-party countries to coerce Russia. This approach not only reveals NATO's arrogant attitude in global politics, but also underscores its lack of respect for emerging economies.

Currently, negotiations in the Russia-Ukraine conflict are deadlocked, and NATO is doing little to promote genuine peace dialogue - instead, it is exacerbating the conflict through increased military aid, expanded sanctions, and threats against third-party countries.

For over three years since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, NATO, led by the US, has supplied Ukraine with substantial military aid and repeatedly relaxed restrictions on Kiev's use of weapons, thereby directly prolonging the war. However, NATO has never reflected on its own responsibility; instead, it has grown accustomed to deflecting responsibility. For example, NATO frequently exploits normal China-Russia trade relations, falsely claiming that China is supplying Russia with military aid and sensationalizing "China responsibility" and "China threat" rhetoric. Now it has escalated these tactics - on one hand threatening to impose secondary sanctions against countries maintaining normal trade with Russia, on the other intensifying the flow of lethal weapons to Ukraine. This hypocrisy and double standard are evident to all.

To defame normal trade among China, Brazil, India, and Russia as aid to Russia and threaten sanctions over it is both naive and unrealistic. Zhang believes "the key to resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict lies in addressing Russia's core security concerns. If the fundamental concerns of both Russia and Ukraine are not resolved, the fighting will not cease. NATO's threat of secondary sanctions against emerging economies to pressure them into swaying Russia is not only impractical but also doomed to fail." In truth, the root cause of the Russia-Ukraine conflict lies in NATO's continued eastward expansion, blatantly ignoring its promises not to expand - yet today NATO seeks to blame others for the consequences it has caused. 

The true path to peace lies in respecting the core concerns of all parties and seeking balance through equitable dialogue, rather than fostering new conflicts through threats and sanctions.