Following on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s June 14 announcement of a peace proposal for Ukraine and call for a new Eurasian security system, another Russian official has now come out echoing this at a UN conference. Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva, addressed a “Conference on Disarmament” in Geneva on June 19. He began by referencing Putin’s speech on June 14 to the Foreign Ministry leadership, then stated bluntly: “Today, we can state with full confidence that the Euro-Atlantic security system has not only failed to justify itself, but has simply suffered fiasco.”
Gatilov said that Russia has attempted for years to uphold and make productive contributions to the European security architecture, but NATO and other members have pushed in the opposite direction, thereby eroding the overall system. Finally, the refusal of Russia’s draft treaties on security guarantees in December 2021 and the ensuing decision by the West to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia has “led to an exacerbation of the already crisis situation on the Eurasian continent, with no resolution in sight,” he said.
The Russia official attacked the “regime-change” policy of NATO, calling it “NATO-style diplomacy.” He listed off: the Balkans States, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia—in each of these cases, NATO has only left behind death, and exacerbates the existing problems.
