MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/. NATO should take Russian proposals for security guarantees seriously or face a "military-technical alternative," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Solovyov Live YouTube channel on Saturday.

"They have two choices," he said. The options are either "to take seriously what we have put on the table or face a military-technical alternative," the diplomat said.

Grushko said Western diplomats told him the West made a grave mistake when Russia was "forgiven" for defending South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008. The diplomats said, according to Grushko, that Russia "smelled blood."

That’s one of the reasons Russia has come up with its recent proposals for security guarantees and made them widely available, he said.

"That we have enough technical capabilities to reliable ensure our military security with all means available is a fact that’s acknowledged by our partners," Grushko said. "Because that’s what NATO is doing now: They are trying to neutralize these advantages of ours."

Russia is signaling it prefers diplomacy, he said.

"We are making clear that we are ready to talk about switching over from a military or a military-technical scenario to a political process" that will strengthen the security of all countries in the area of the OCSE, Euro-Atlantic and Eurasia, Grushko said.

Russia in Friday released draft agreements titled the Treaty Between the US and Russia on Security Guarantees and On Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The proposals were handed over to a US representative at a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry on December 15.

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier called on NATO to start substantive talks to give Russia reliable and long-term security guarantees. The guarantees will need to be legally binding because, Putin said, the West had walked back on their previous verbal commitments.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kremlin Aide Yury Ushakov told Sullivan that Russia was ready for an immediate start of the talks about the proposed agreements on security guarantees. Russia would be represented in the talks by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov.