MOSCOW, January 14. /TASS/. Russia wants to receive precisely legal security guarantees from the US and NATO since Western partners never fulfilled their political obligations and it seems that they are not going to implement them now, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference on the results of Russian diplomatic activities in 2021 on Friday.
"I will particularly note that we need precisely legally binding guarantees because the political obligations that were made in the 90s, not to mention the verbal obligations, have never been fulfilled by our partners. Apparently, they are not going to do this now either. This is a separate subject, we explained in detail the inferiority of such an approach and the inadmissibility of a biased interpretation of those political obligations in terms of NATO expansion," he said.
According to the Russian top diplomat, the document drafts submitted to the US and NATO in December are a package deal and are aiming to exclude any further eastward advancement by NATO and the deployment of weapons threatening Russia near its borders. "On January 10 in Geneva, talks were held between our and American experts and a meeting with the participation of NATO countries [took place] on January 12 in Brussels. We indicated very clearly and substantiated this in detail - the necessity to focus precisely on stopping the expansion of one bloc harmful to the interests of other countries on the European continent," he pointed out.
On December 17, the Russian Foreign Ministry published the draft agreements between Moscow and Washington on security guarantees and the measures of ensuring the security of Russia and NATO member states. Consultations on these issues were held on January 10 in Geneva, a session of the NATO-Russia Council was held on January 12 in Brussels and a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council took place on January 13 in Vienna.