MOSCOW, January 14. /TASS/. The written response from the US and NATO to Russia’s proposals on security will indicate, how sincere Western partners are towards Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a press conference Friday.
"As President [Vladimir Putin] said, and as we have repeatedly reiterated, we introduced the documents and we insist that our main concern regarding NATO’s non-expansion becomes legally binding," he said. "In response, I expect to receive something coherent, besides the current discourse that this is unacceptable for the West."
"Let’s see what they provide us on paper, and then we will decide, how sincere our Western colleagues are, not back in the 1990s, but right now, in their relations with Russia," Lavrov noted.
When asked when this security demand appeared, the Minister underscored that "it was always there."
"After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the security demand started forming into political obligations, adopted at the highest level. Our Western colleagues misused these political obligations, and did not fulfill them, to put it simply," the Minister said. "When we asked to move the guarantees of security into the status of legal obligations and proposed a corresponding document back in 2010, we were told: ‘this does not concern you, we only provide legal obligations to NATO member states.’"
In 30 years, Russia "has accumulated enough understanding on how to act further," Lavrov said, adding that "nothing will come out of promises and political spells."