Russia prepared for dialogue with West on security guarantees, says senior diplomat

MOSCOW – Russia is prepared for dialogue with the West on security guarantees and strategic stability issues, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told RBC on Thursday, TASS reported.

“We are prepared for dialogue on these issues (security guarantees – TASS), as well as on issues related to strategic stability. We regret that our colleagues in Washington made a decision – and announced it several days ago – to suspend these contacts,” he pointed out, adding that the US was fully to blame for suspending dialogue.

 “We keep working calmly and confidently, we have specific goals to achieve. No one is cutting off dialogue with the US but the channels for dialogue are a separate issue that depends on the goals that we are facing,” he stressed.

According to Ryabkov, Russia and the US currently maintain dialogue mostly through embassies. “We don’t have a reason to believe that this algorithm will change in the near future,” he noted.

On December 17, 2021, the Russian Foreign Ministry released draft agreements on the security guarantees that Moscow expects to receive from Washington and NATO. The documents particularly oblige NATO to cease its eastward expansion and return its military infrastructure to the 1997 borders. The United States and NATO handed their written responses to Russia’s security proposals over to Moscow on January 26, 2022. The West failed to make crucial concessions, Russia said in its own response in February.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation based on a request from the heads of the Donbass republics. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans to occupy Ukrainian territories and the goal was to demilitarize and denazify the country. Russia’s Defense Ministry reported later that the Russian Armed Forces were not delivering strikes against Ukrainian cities. The ministry emphasized that the Ukrainian military infrastructure was being destroyed by precision weapons and there was no threat to civilians.

Raghda Sawas