www.zerohedge.com By Tyler Durden
A top US security official in Europe has warned the “drumbeat of war is sounding loud” amid this week’s series of NATO and Russian talks, also as Washington and Brussels continue to condemn Russia’s troop build-up near Ukraine.
“We’re facing a crisis in European security. The drumbeat of war is sounding loud, and the rhetoric has gotten rather shrill,”  US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Michael Carpenter said Thursday.
“If the Russians walk away from these talks, it’ll be clear that they were never serious about diplomacy in the first place,” he added. However, the Russian side was miffed when at the very start of talks Monday in Geneva (and subsequent talks in Brussels and Vienna), the US declared its core demand of no more NATO eastward expansion to be a “non-starter” in the talks.
