Russian President Vladimir Putin has commented on the US' written response to Moscow's demands on security guarantees, stating that the West has basically ignored the Kremlin's proposals. The president elaborated that the US failed to satisfy three key proposals by Russia in the field of security.
"We did not see our three key demands adequately considered: stopping NATO's expansion, refusing to use strike weapons systems near Russian borders, and returning the bloc's military infrastructure in Europe to how it was in 1997," Putin said.
The president added that the West basically ignored Russian security proposals under the pretext of defending its freedom to pick its own allies. Putin stressed that this right was only half the principle of indivisible security.
The latter was first defined in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and stressed that it was important to maintain the security of all participating parties, which included both western nations and the USSR. The document noted that any party's insecurity might have negative consequences for the entire international community.
West Tries to Forget Principle of Indivisible Security
The western countries are trying to "forget" about the key principle of indivisible security and that is something Russia mentioned in its letter to US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
He added that Blinken agreed with him that the question of indivisible security is worth discussing by the US and Russia.
"I've informed Antony Blinken that we will not allow this topic to be brushed under the carpet. We will insist on honest talks and a genuine explanation of why the West seems not to want to fulfil its obligations - or only to fulfil them to its own advantage," Lavrov said.
The minister noted, however, that the US gave a negative response to Moscow's demand to follow this principle. Lavrov highlighted that the agreements on indivisible security reached during the OSCE summit in 1999 and in 2010 included not only freedom of alliances that western nations defend so rigorously with regard to Ukraine's membership of NATO. Those agreements also forbade a nation to increase its own security at the expense of other countries' security.