In remarks to the media today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented that in its response to Russia’s demand for security guarantees, the U.S. had offered “no positive response” to the Kremlin’s core demands. “The main issue is our clear position on the unacceptability of further NATO expansion to the East and the deployment of highly-destructive weapons that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation,” Lavrov explained, as quoted by RT. “It is significant that when our Western colleagues react to our proposals, they always call for the implementation of agreed principles in the Euro-Atlantic... they immediately say this means NATO has the right to expand and no country has the right to prohibit it.” The response received from the U.S., Lavrov said, offers grounds for serious discussion “but only on secondary matters.”
The Foreign Minister added that Russia intends to emphasize the hypocritical nature of the West’s claim that it is allegedly impossible to guarantee NATO’s non-expansion. Russia was told that in the 1990s there were no written guarantees on NATO’s non-expansion, only verbal ones that were not serious, or the words of which were misinterpreted. But now, he said, “we do have such written pledges, confirmed within the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) framework more than once, including at the summit level. Now we will put the emphasis on explaining this crafty stance taken by our Western counterparts,” he said. It should be noted, he added, that when Russia presented Western countries with their pledges to halt NATO’s eastward expansion, they began to explain their policy towards the alliance’s reckless expansion “in a rather immature way.”
Lavrov pointed to the written documents—not verbal pledges—that had been signed by all national parties to the OSCE, including the U.S. President, which are the 1999 Istanbul Declaration and the 2010 Astana Declaration. Under these documents, he said, “the right to choose unions is clearly conditioned by the need to take into account the security interests of any other OSCE member state, including the Russian Federation.” This presents them with a very serious situation, Lavrov said, forcing them to find a way out of it, so they try to hush up the principle, which stipulates that a state cannot strengthen its security at the expense of the security of other states. “Our Western partners do not mention either the Istanbul or the Astana declaration in ongoing discussion on European security. These items are sidestepped.” However, he said, “[W]e cannot accept this. We will now focus on getting clarity regarding this hypocritical position of our Western partners.”
The Russian Foreign Minister reported that when he met with Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Jan. 21 in Geneva, he asked him to explain the grounds on which Western countries “considered the commitments assumed within the OSCE solely as a menu from which they are free to choose the dishes that taste good to them, and why they are disregarding or talking around their pledge to honor the interests of other countries. Mr. Blinken did not reply to my question. He only shrugged his shoulders, and that’s it. Blinken had no reply.” Lavrov announced that Russia will soon send them an official request for an explanation as to why they choose only “one of their commitments and disregard the other commitments on which its implementation depends.” This will be an official request sent to all nations whose leaders signed the Istanbul and Astana declarations. “I hope that it will not take them long to explain the Western position.”
Other than this, Lavrov said that the U.S. response is being analyzed and assessed. Moscow has also received NATO’s response, so both documents are being analyzed “as a package.” Once an inter-agency coordination of conclusions is completed, these will be submitted to President Putin, “who will make a decision on our further actions.” Lavrov did say that he expected the contents of the U.S. document to be made known, or leaked, sometime in the near future.
https://www.mid.ru/en/press_service/minister_speeches/1796041/
(See Documentation section for excerpts from OSCE documents.)