The Russian foreign minister also noted that the talks with the US and NATO on security issues have not yet been concluded
/TASS/. Russia is not interested in a war, yet Moscow won’t allow its security interests to be disregarded, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with radio stations on Friday.
“If it depends on the Russian Federation, there won’t be a war. We do not want wars, but we won’t allow our interests to be flagrantly stepped on and ignored,” he emphasized.
The Russian top diplomat noted that the talks with the US and NATO on security issues have not yet been concluded. “As you know, the Americans and NATO members have studied our extremely simple proposals contained in the drafts of an agreement with Washington and an agreement with the North Atlantic alliance for over a month and we received the answers only the day before yesterday, which muddy the waters in many ways in such a Western style, yet there are some rational kernels on secondary issues,” he explained.
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The foreign minister specified that these “secondary issues” at certain stages were very important. According to him, they involve the issue of intermediate-and shorter-range missiles that emerged after the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). “We urged them to listen to the voice of reason after all, and the President of Russia then sent his message to all OSCE members, inviting them to join our unilateral moratorium with the coordination of verification measures. This was shrugged off, but now it is included in their proposals,” he pointed out.
Additionally, according to the top diplomat, the counter-proposals contained concepts similar to the previously ignored Russian initiative to withdraw the exercises away from the border on both sides and to agree on a limit distance for the approach of combat aircraft and warships, [in addition to] a number of other deconfliction, de-escalation, and confidence-building measures. “All of this has been rejected for the past two or three years. Now, all of this is being put forward for discussion. So the constructive content in these proposals, essentially, has been borrowed from Russian recent initiatives. Nevertheless, I think that this is still something, as we say in Russia. Yet, the important part for us is to sort out the conceptual foundations that European security is built on,” the foreign minister concluded.
Moscow’s initiatives and Western responses
On December 17, 2021, the Russian Foreign Ministry published draft agreements between Moscow and Washington on security guarantees and measures for ensuring the security of Russia and NATO member states. The proposed measures include guarantees that NATO will not advance eastward, and not grant membership to Ukraine and other countries into the alliance, along with the non-deployment of serious offensive weapons, including nuclear ones.
On January 26, the US and NATO handed over written responses to Russia on Moscow’s security guarantees that it was demanding from Washington and Brussels. The American side requested that the documents not be made public, yet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg enumerated their basic provisions. According to these statements, the West did not make concessions to Russia considered to be critical but did indicate directions for further negotiations.