Russian foreign affairs minister sounds less cool note on US counter proposals
By Alexander Bueso
Date: Friday 28 Jan 2022
(Sharecast News) - Russia´s foreign affairs minister appeared to sound a less cool response to Washington's response to Moscow's "proposals" for security guarantees.
According to Russia's state news agency, TASS, Sergei Lavrov said that "if it depends on the Russian Federation, there won't be a war. We do not want wars, but we won't allow our interests to be flagrantly stepped on and ignored."
He reportedly also saw some "rational kernels" on "secondary issues", which at certain stages were nevertheless "very important".
He was referring to the issue of intermediate and shorter range missiles that arose after US withdrawal from the INF treaty, which he said Washington had previously shrugged off
On US counter proposals regarding restrictions on military exercises and distance limits between military units, Lavrov said that they "were at least something", even if they essentially borrowed from earlier Russian ones.
Those counter proposals were in addition to "a number of other deconfliction, de-escalation, and confidence-building measures."
"All of this has been rejected for the past two or three years. Now, all of this is being put forward for discussion. So the constructive content in these proposals, essentially, has been borrowed from Russian recent initiatives.
"Nevertheless, I think that this is still something, as we say in Russia. Yet, the important part for us is to sort out the conceptual foundations that European security is built on."
Sergei Lavrov reportedly also noted that talks with the US and NATO had not yet concluded, pointing out how the West had taken a month to study Russia's "extremely simple" proposals.
French President Emmanuel Macron was due to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin later on Friday.
Reuters reported that the Kremlin had not ruled out the possibility that Putin could provide some Russian assessments of the Western response to its proposals during the conversation with Macron.
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