WASHINGTON, February 4. /TASS/. The United States believes in indivisible security and wants to discuss with Russia how both sides understand the notion, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland has told TASS in an interview.
"We all believe in indivisibility of security. That's been in all of our founding documents everything we've agreed to," she said, when asked to comment on how the United States understand the obligation not to enhance its security for the benefit of other states, and whether Washington is still guided by the relevant provisions of the 1999 OSCE Charter for European Security and the Astana Declaration, adopted during the 2010 OSCE summit.
The Russian Foreign Ministry asked those questions to the US Department of State recently.
"Our concern is that it is actually Russia that is threatening indivisibility of security. It is Russia that has invaded Georgia, that has troops in Moldova against the will of that government and that has annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbass," the US diplomat continued.
The United States does not recognize Crimea’s reunification with Russia in 2014.
"So we have to talk about both of us. How we understand the indivisibility of security and get back to a common understanding that preserves peace and security," Nuland added.
In her words, the people of Russia deserve security in the same way as the people of America do.
"They deserve prosperity, they deserve better healthcare just as our people do and those are the things we should be focusing on that nobody needs a big war right now and particularly not the parents, and the families in Russia who have kids sitting in the freezing cold hundred thousand troops on Russia's borders with Ukraine, another 30,000 going to Belarus," she said. "We don't need this."
"We need to be working on COVID. We need to be working on building back better. We need to be working on peace and security, indivisibility of security as you say," Nuland added.
El Pais leak
At the same time, she claimed that Moscow was responsible for a leak of a confidential US document on Russia’s security proposals.
"In fact, our original proposal, which the Russian side has now, put out in public, it was in El Pais yesterday, speaks very specifically to the indivisibility of security. So in our second letter to Mr. Lavrov we pointed that out and especially said, let's get to the negotiating table. Let's solve this through de-escalation. Let's solve this through diplomacy. Let's strengthen the system of security between us. Nobody needs, especially Russia, body bags coming home right now. We don't need that. We need to be focusing on the real issues of the day," she said.
When asked whether she meant that Moscow was responsible for the leak, Nuland replied: "We're pretty confident in the sense that the markings on the document were the same as those that we gave to the Russian Federation, the copies of the document that were given to allies had different markings on them.".