MOSCOW, January 13. /TASS/. The United States and its NATO allies are unready in any form to meet Russia’s key security guarantee demands halfway, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in an interview with RTVI on Thursday.

"The main problem is that the United States and its NATO allies are unready in any form and for any reasons to meet halfway our key demands to halt NATO’s expansion, curtail the alliance’s infrastructure and return it to the 1997 borders. And, naturally, [they are unready] on the issues that relate to legally binding guarantees of not deploying the corresponding systems in close proximity to our borders," Ryabkov said.

The senior Russian diplomat said that he was unhappy in this situation that the forecast on the absence of surprises at the negotiations had come true.

"This is what we have but with a reservation that I do not know exactly what took place at the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation]. It seems that all things are quite predictable there as well," Ryabkov pointed out.

A Russia-NATO Council meeting held in Brussels on January 12 marked the second stage of consultations between Moscow and Western countries on Russia’s proposals on European security and was a follow-up of the negotiations between Russia and the United States in Geneva on January 10.