TASS quoted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying on Sunday (December 26) that Russia has received a NATO proposal and will start negotiations on Moscow’s security issues on January 12 and is considering this proposal.
Russia is disturbing the West by gathering troops near Ukraine. Last week, it announced a wish list of security proposals that it hopes to negotiate, including a promise that NATO will abandon any military activities in Eastern Europe and Ukraine.
The TASS news agency quoted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying: “We have received this (NATO) proposal and we are considering it.”
The United States and Ukraine indicated that Russia may be preparing to invade its former Soviet neighbors. Russia denies this and says it is Ukraine’s growing relationship with NATO that has led to the escalation of the confrontation. It compares it with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the world was on the brink of nuclear war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia wants to avoid conflict, but needs the United States and its allies to respond “immediately” to its security requirements. Moscow has stated that it expects to start talks with US officials on this issue in Geneva in January.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has stated that some of Russia’s security proposals are clearly unacceptable, but Washington will put forward more specific ideas on the format of any talks.
The Kremlin’s request contains elements that the West has already eliminated—for example, Russia’s effective veto power over Ukraine’s future accession to NATO.
Others implied that the United States withdrew its nuclear weapons from Europe and withdrew from the multinational NATO camps from Poland and the Baltic states that once belonged to the Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
