When Sergey Lavrov entered Russian (Soviet) diplomatic service, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had not yet been born. Yesterday, the German Pipsqueak met the Russian Foreign Minister in a meeting that lasted longer than the planned one hour. Not only did the experience gap play a role, but so did the fact that Baerbock’s hands are to a large extent tied by Chancellor Scholz’s decision to centralize Germany’s Russia policy.
At their press joint conference, whose readout is published on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Lavrov strongly suggested that receiving written responses to their proposals is required for security talks to proceed. “We expressed our concern with NATO’s policy of containing Russia,” Lavrov stated. “In this regard, we raised and discussed in some depth the initiatives that Russia had put forward regarding agreeing upon dependable and legally binding security guarantees. As you may be aware, we presented these guarantees to the United States and the Alliance members. We are now awaiting answers to these proposals, as promised, in order to continue the talks.”
