MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. The United States’ position will have a decisive role in Russia’s dialogue with NATO on legal guarantees of security in the Euro-Atlantic region, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Sunday.
"Even if we think that NATO works on the consensus basis, the United States’ position will be decisive, as usual," he noted.
According to the Russian senior diplomat, "the European Union is under total control of NATO in the sphere of military security." And as of today, its ambitions to play an independent military political role, to become less dependent on the United States find no practical implementation," he said, adding that the European Union earlier refused to set up a Russia-EU council on security matters. At the same time, we welcomed the European Union’s statement on its readiness to discuss security problems with Russia.
"But I would like to recall that as part of the concept of four common spaces where we have made visible progress, we once suggested a Russian-EU Security Council be established so that we could have a possibility for direct dialogue to discuss the security situation in Europe and we suggested that this dialogue be continued until joint solutions on certain regional problems are reached. But the European Union turned that down then," Grushko said.
On Friday, the Russian foreign ministry released two Russian draft agreements in security guarantees from the United States and NATO. These documents were handed over to the US side at a meeting at the Russian foreign ministry on December 15.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin called on NATO to begin substantive talks on reliable long-term security guarantees to Russia. He stressed that Russia needs legally binding guarantees because the West has failed to fulfill its verbal commitments.