Russia is ready to offer the West a new European security treaty. It should be a compromise, but the West wants to dominate. What does Moscow plan?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke at a ministerial meeting of OSCE member states.
Speaking about NATO's military infrastructure coming closer to the borders with Russia, Lavrov said that a horrific scenario of military confrontation was coming back.
Moscow will soon submit proposals for a new European security treaty, which, as he said, was designed to stop NATO's eastward expansion. It goes about legally formalized obligations at this point, Lavrov said.
"In the near future we will make relevant proposals. We hope that they will be seriously considered," Lavrov said.
At a meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Lavrov assured him that Russia did not want any conflicts, but NATO's further expansion to the east would affect the fundamental interests of Russia's security, the Russian Foreign Minister said.
"If our NATO partners state that no one has the right to dictate to a country wishing to join NATO whether it can do it or not, then we refer to the provisions of international law, according to which each state is entitled to choose ways to ensure its legitimate interests in the field of security," said Lavrov.
In a comment for Pravda.Ru, Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences, head of the Center for Global Studies and International Relations, Vadim Kozyulin, noted that the incorporation of Ukraine, Georgia and other republics into NATO constituted a threat to Russia's security.
"We consider this a red line, a violation of those verbal agreements that had been reached in the 1990s. Russia has come to realise that when it was too late, but Russia has clearly expressed its stance on this problem," the expert said.
Regrettably, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg already said that Russia could not have any interests in its immediate surroundings.
"This is a matter of diplomatic work. One can only guess what kind of a compromise one may find here. Russia has her reasons. Ukraine, NATO, the European Union have reasons of their own. In short, everyone has their own concerns, and everyone would like to get rid of them, and this is what diplomacy is for," said Vadim Kozyulin.
Let us ask ourselves – what kind of compromise it might be? Shall Russia give up on Donbass? Putin will never agree to that. Will he let Western NGOs propagate "democracy" inside Russia? Can Russia join the West in an effort to counter China? Brushing all these assumptions aside, one has to agree with the fact that the West does not really want a compromise — the West wants to dominate. Russophobia is in their blood.
Therefore, it is unlikely to find the necessary compromise through diplomatic efforts, and the Kremlin is aware of that. Russia would probably have to make a preemptive proposal, similarly to how Putin once said:
"You have not listened to us before, so listen now."
The previous security system in Europe was based on the 1975 Helsinki Treaty on the inviolability of post-war borders. Taking into consideration the collapse of the USSR, the unification of the GDR, the Kosovo precedent, the Crimean referendum, it becomes obvious that those provisions have been violated repeatedly. Of course, a new compromise in Europe is needed, but the West feared and respected the USSR during the 1970s. The USSR had been considered a superpower, a pole of the world — one does not see such attitude towards Russia now. Nowadays, Russia must fight to win its authority back.