The Times - UK (2022-01-13)

32 V2 Thursday January 13 2022 | the times

Wo r l d

B

otticelli’s Man of

Sorrows goes on

sale in New York

this month with a

guarantee of

$40 million, but the

winning bidder will take

home two paintings in one

(Charlie Mitchell writes).

Technical analysis by

Sotheby’s on the painting

of Christ, which has been

in private hands for two

centuries, has revealed an

image of a Madonna and

Child buried beneath the

Renaissance painter’s

delicate brushstrokes.

The image, probably

from an aborted painting,

shows the Madonna

cradling the baby’s head

against her own,

according to Chris Apostle

of Sotheby’s in New York.

Known as a “Madonna of

tenderness”, it is a style

common in Greek icons.

When turned upside

down and exposed to

infrared light, the baby’s

nose, eyes and laughing

mouth are visible below

the Man of Sorrow’s chest.

The Virgin Mary’s eye and

eyebrow, decorative cloak

and Christ’s chubby arm

are also discernible.

The second drawing

may have been traced

from the cartoon, because

the lines vary in thickness

and were then filled in

with paint. But Apostle

believes the head of the

baby Jesus is a one-off.

Botticelli’s painting has

been dated to 1500, when

wood panel was expensive.

“One wouldn’t want to

throw it away,” Apostle

told the Art Newspaper.

Botticelli portrait is

two for price of one

Nato is ready to send troop reinforce-
ments to eastern Europe if Russia
invades Ukraine, the alliance’s secre-
tary-general warned after talks with
Moscow broke up without resolution.
Jens Stoltenberg said there was “a
real risk of a new armed conflict in
Europe” after Nato allies unanimously
rejected the Kremlin’s demands for a
guarantee that Ukraine would never be
admitted to the alliance.
During four hours of talks Russia re-
iterated its demands for Nato to halt
any further expansion and to pull back
from the post-Soviet states that joined
the alliance in 1997, eight years after the
fall of the Berlin Wall.
Stoltenberg, however, said Russia
was in danger of achieving the opposite,
warning that “if Russia once again uses
force against Ukraine and further
invades Ukraine, then we have to
seriously look into the need to further
increase our presence in the eastern
part of the alliance”.
Latvia and Estonia said yesterday
that all the Baltic states were lobbying
Nato to expand its military footprint in
their country as a deterrent to Russia,
fearing they may be next to be targeted.
Nato units were sent in rotation to
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland
in 2014 after Russia first invaded
Ukraine and annexed Crimea, having
invaded Georgia in 2008. Russia is de-
manding that both countries be perma-
nently excluded from Nato member-
ship.
The meeting of the Nato-Russia
Council in Brussels yesterday was the
latest in a frantic week of diplomacy
seeking to defuse the situation in
Ukraine, along whose border Russia
has deployed 100,000 troops. On
Monday the American delegation, led
by Wendy Sherman, the US deputy sec-
retary of state, meet Sergei Ryabkov,
her Russian counterpart, for nine hours
of talks.
After four hours of negotiations
between Nato and the Russian delega-
tion, Sherman said she had heard noth-
ing new from the position laid out in
Geneva, despite her warnings to Ryab-
kov that Nato would never agree to give
the Kremlin a de facto veto over its
membership.
“We were basically say-
ing to the Russians: some
of the things you put on
the table are non-starters
for us. We are not going to
agree that Nato cannot
expand any further. We
are not going to agree to go
back to 1997,” she said.
“Together, the United

Nato vows to send

troops if Russia

invades Ukraine

POLAND

Black Sea

RUSSIA

LITHUANIA

LATVIA

ESTONIA

Crimea

BELARUS

Russian

200 miles base

Battle groups

Orzysz

US

Croatia

Romania

UK

Albania

Czech Rep

Iceland

Italy

Montenegro

Poland

Slovakia

Slovenia

Spain

Adazi

Canada

UKRAINE

Belgium

Czech Rep

Iceland

Luxembourg

Netherlands

Norway

Rukla

Germany

Nato

member

Tapa

UK led

Denmark

France

Iceland

States and our Nato allies made clear

we will not slam the door shut on Nato’s

open-door policy, a policy that has

always been central to the alliance.”

Sherman said the meeting had over-

run because every one of alliance’s 30

member states wanted to speak to

underline their unanimity over the

issue of Nato membership. That unity is

a rebuke to Russia’s hopes of exploiting

European differences over how to

approach relations with Moscow.

Separately, Alexander Grushko, the

Russian deputy foreign minister, said

the talks with Nato had been frank and

heart to heart. But he noted that they

revealed “a large number of disagree-

ments on fundamental issues”, chiefly

Nato’s refusal to consider barring

Ukraine from joining the alliance.

Stoltenberg called the meeting a “de-

fining moment for European security”,

but said significant differences

remained. In Monday’s meeting the

Americans sought to steer the talks

towards reciprocal arms control and

troop movement agreements, areas of

potential co-operation that Moscow

regards as secondary or tertiary to its

central demands towards Nato.

Today the action moves to Vienna

with a meeting of the Organisation of

Security and Co-operation in Europe

(OSCE), at present chaired by Poland,

to discuss the Ukraine crisis. The OSCE

is a conflict prevention forum that

brings together Russia and the post-

Soviet states with western Europe.

Sherman acknowledged there was

little chance of any concrete agree-

ments coming out of the meeting

because of the need of negotiators to

return to their capitals and consult with

their leadership.

Russia’s defence ministry, mean-

while, sought to blame Nato for Mos-

cow’s refusal to withdraw troops along

Ukraine’s border, having rebuffed

Washington’s pleas for it to pull back.

“The Russian side has repeatedly

offered to take measures to de-escalate

the situation,” the ministry said, refer-

ring to Moscow’s demands that

Ukraine be permanently barred from

Nato. “The Russian initiatives have

been ignored by their side.”

Both Sherman and Stoltenberg said

Russia had shown only fleeting interest

in proposals to explore a new nuclear

arms control treaty and agreement on

future military exercises and missile

deployment, areas where they had

hoped to find more common ground.

Stoltenberg said that even those dis-

cussions could be difficult if the mili-

tary build-up continued, as he reported

it was yesterday, with live-fire exercises

along Ukraine’s eastern border. Sher-

man also spoke of Moscow’s active use

of propaganda and misinformation as a

tool of asymmetric warfare, highlight-

ing the hybrid action that Russia could

take to destabilise Ukraine short of an

all-out military invasion.

The West must stand firm on Ukraine,

leading article, page 31

Russia
Catherine Philp
Diplomatic Correspondent
Samantha Berkhead Moscow

Hungary’s election is shaping up to be

an ugly and divisive battle, just a day

after the announcement that the vote

will take place on April 3.

Viktor Orban, 58, the EU’s longest-

serving and most controversial leader,

faces his greatest political challenge in

a career that stretches back to the fall of

communism in the 1980s.

His opponent is Peter Marki-Zay, a

Catholic conservative and father of

seven who united the opposition into a

bloc encompassing liberals, socialists

and former far-right nationalists.

Orban in fight for political

Marki-Zay, 49, has promised to oust

the “corrupt and greedy regime”. The

rule of the Fidesz party has led to the

rise of billionaires closely aligned to

them, such as Istvan Tiborcz, Orban’s

son-in-law, who has been linked to

scandals involving public contracts.

Lorinc Meszaros, a close friend of Or-

ban, saw his wealth rise from some 23

billion forint in 2017 to an estimated

296 billion forint in 2019, which at to-

day’s exchange rate would be about

£700 million. He once quipped: “God,

luck and Viktor Orban certainly played

a role in what I’ve achieved so far.”

Opinion polls show Marki-Zay neck

and neck with Fidesz, however, he must

Hungary

Bruno Waterfield Brussels

Profile

W

endy Sherman began

her professional life

as a social worker,

working with abused

women and impoverished

communities.

“I only half joke that those

clinical skills have been very

effective with both dictators and

members of congress,” the

woman leading the American

delegation in talks with Russia,

once said. “It does help to

understand interpersonal

relations and how people think

and feel.”

Her first taste of dealing

with the Russians came when

she joined the Clinton

administration in the 1990s,

leading efforts to get funding

through Congress for support to

the post-Soviet states.

Sherman returned to

government under the Obama

administration, serving as the

lead American negotiator in the

run-up to the 2015 Iran nuclear

deal, an agreement collapsed by

President Trump in 2018.

Sherman was chosen by

President Biden in 2020 to

serve as deputy secretary of

state under Antony Blinken.

Her book, Not for the Faint of

Heart: Lessons in Courage,

Power and Persistence, draws

on her experiences in

diplomacy over three

decades.

Wendy Sherman said
Nato members were
keen to show unity