STOCKHOLM, December 2. /TASS/. The West must have realized the importance of Russia’s proposals on elaborating security guarantees, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.
"We are not saying that security guarantees must be given to us. We are saying, as President [of Russia Vladimir] Putin emphasized yesterday, that collective guarantees of ensuring the security of each other and all the participants in the pan-European process should be worked out. And I do not want even to guess so far about whether the West would refuse to consider them. To my mind, everyone has heard President Putin and grown aware that our proposals are serious and now we are formulating them in writing," Russia’s top diplomat told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of OSCE foreign ministers in Stockholm.
Russia’s top diplomat also said that he would not like to guess now what reaction these proposals would evoke in the West.
"It is important to see how seriously the Western community will treat this and how sincerely they are interested in de-escalation and the cessation of attempts to unilaterally build up their advantages, including in the form of military infrastructure, the armed forces and hardware," Lavrov said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at a Foreign Ministry enlarged board meeting on November 18, said that the Western countries’ tense state after Russia’s serious warnings must persist as long as possible to avoid conflicts. He added that it was vital to seek long-term guarantees for Russia’s security in this domain.