Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reported in his interview with RT yesterday that Russia will enter into talks with the U.S. on security guarantees early next year. He specified: “It has been agreed that the first round early next year should be bilateral contact between the American negotiators and our own. They have been named, and they are acceptable to both parties. After that, we plan to use the negotiating platform to discuss the second document—the draft Russia-NATO agreement—in the foreseeable future, preferably in January.”
Russia is ready to discuss American concerns, “but they have not yet presented them,” he added. “After we coordinate organizational matters, there will be a lot of hard work on the essence. But, as President Putin has said, it cannot last forever, “because the situation around us has been going from bad to worse in recent decades. NATO’s military infrastructure is approaching our border…. We will do our best to make our message loud and clear. I hope that this, together with our efforts to ensure a reliable defense capability, will convince our partners to take us seriously.”
What Moscow will not accept is the imposition of conditions on those talks, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov added this morning. “We would like the agreements that we put on paper to be formalized promptly so that they take the shape of contractual agreements. If the U.S. demands we carry out some activities on our territory as a precondition, which will appeal to Washington and to other NATO capitals or which the Americans would like to present as a precondition for future work at Kiev’s behest, this won’t do,” TASS quoted him saying.
