MOSCOW, August 29. /TASS/. Future security guarantees for Ukraine should be the outcome of a peaceful settlement addressing the conflict’s root causes, rather than a precondition for negotiations, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
"It is important to understand that providing security guarantees is not a condition, but the result of a peaceful settlement based on eliminating the root causes of the crisis in Ukraine. This will also ensure the security of our country," the diplomat stressed.
The diplomat also outlined what Moscow believes the outcome of negotiations should entail: "Demilitarization, denazification, Ukraine’s neutrality and non-nuclear status, recognition of territorial realities, protection of the rights of Russians and Russian speakers, and an end to the persecution of canonical Orthodox."
"Security guarantees must be grounded in a common understanding that respects Russia’s security interests - not in attempts to turn Ukraine into some kind of rabid beast," she added.
Zakharova argued that Western proposals on security guarantees for Ukraine would have the opposite effect, fueling instability. "Essentially rooted in the rudiments of colonial thinking, the so-called security guarantees being debated in Europe are nothing of the sort. They only accelerate the erosion of strategic stability both regionally and globally," she stressed.
According to her, Moscow views Western initiatives as "one-sided schemes aimed at containing Russia, designed to pull the Kiev regime deeper into NATO’s orbit."
She noted that Western efforts undermine Ukraine’s neutral, non-aligned, and non-nuclear commitments enshrined in the 1990 declaration on state sovereignty. "This line violates the principle of indivisible security and casts Kiev as a strategic provocateur on Russia’s borders, raising the risk of the alliance being dragged into armed conflict with our country," Zakharova warned.
"Nothing new has been invented here - international legal literature is full of such tactics. And yet this is the strategic provocateur we now have on our borders," she concluded.