MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/. The US understood the warning that the Ukraine issue was of fundamental importance to Russia only after the start of the special military operation, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Friday.

"The special military operation drove the message home. Apparently, the Americans understood our warning that the problem of Ukraine is of fundamental importance to us, that we cannot put up with a situation that, without being resolved diplomatically, has acquired a military dimension," Ryabkov said during the discussion entitled Russia - USA: What are the Limits of Confrontation? On the platform of the international discussion club Valdai.

"By their hostile actions and their arrogant disregard for our legitimate demands for juridically binding security guarantees, including the non-expansion of NATO, the non-deployment of strike weapons near the Russian border, and the restoration of the alliance's military potential to the condition of 1997, the US authorities actually brought relations between our countries to a point of no return," Ryabkov said.

The West, he recalled, rejected Russia's proposals made in December last year. The talks held between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as negotiations between military officials in Geneva in January ended inconclusively.