MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. The policy of pulling Ukraine into the North Atlantic alliance with the possible deployment of strike missile systems near Russian borders creates military risks, up to a large-scale conflict in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Bosnia-Herzegovina newspaper Oslobodjenje on Friday.
"The policy towards pulling Kiev into NATO with a prospect of strike missile systems appearing near our borders creates unacceptable security threats to Russia, provoking serious military risks for all the parties involved, up to a large-scale conflict in Europe," Russia’s top diplomat said in the interview on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Russia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Russian foreign minister said that he had held negotiations with his US counterpart Antony Blinken on the sidelines of an OSCE Ministerial Council Meeting in Stockholm on December 2, and on December 7 Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden held a talk via a video-conference. As Russia’s top diplomat pointed out, the Ukrainian crisis and the absence of progress in the fulfillment of the Minsk Agreements on settling the situation in eastern Ukraine topped the agenda of these talks.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin cited specific examples to show Kiev’s destructive policy aimed at dismantling the Minsk Agreements and the accords reached in the Normandy format and expressed his serious concerns over Ukraine’s provocative actions against Donbass," Lavrov added.
"The presidents agreed to instruct their teams to start a serious dialogue on the issue of elaborating long-term and legally binding guarantees of security on Russia’s western borders," the Russian foreign minister said.
As Russia’s top diplomat also said, on December 15 Moscow handed over to the US side its drafts of an agreement between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on security guarantees and an agreement between the Russian Federation and NATO member states on security measures and was waiting for a response. "We believe that it is primarily necessary to reduce the scale of confrontation caused by the US policy of patronizing their Ukrainian protégé," Lavrov said.