Russia reacted cautiously to a NATO proposal to revitalize the NATO-Russia Council. In a video interview on the state-funded YouTube channel Solovyov Live, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that Russia could not trust the words of the West. According to British diplomatic reports, the West promised Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand to Russia’s borders. And according to this diplomat, whose memoir Lavrov has just read, the West intended to keep this promise.
“Military colonization” is currently taking place in Ukraine, although the Ukrainian constitution prohibits the establishment of foreign military bases on its own territory. This is unacceptable for Russia. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said on Monday, according to the Russian state news agency Tass, that there is a risk of an open military conflict between NATO and Russia.
NATO is currently a “purely geopolitical project to colonize the states of the former Soviet Union,” Lavrov said. It is therefore necessary to agree on security guarantees in the form of a treaty with the USA as the leading nation in NATO, as well as with NATO itself. Russia recently submitted text proposals for such agreements. These are now being examined in Washington, said Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov on Monday, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. Peskow said it was important to talk to NATO about such an agreement. The importance of the NATO-Russia Council in this context will depend on whether or not a solution is found. Lavrov also expressed the distrust that prevails in Moscow towards the West in the interview: He said the West was planning a “small war” in Ukraine to provoke Russia into a military reaction.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had suggested January 12th as the date for a Council meeting in Moscow. The Council has not met since 2019. Russia had turned down several invitations on the grounds that NATO had only held the dialogue forum founded in 2002 on a pro forma basis.
In Berlin on Monday a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office welcomed the invitation to Russia and said that it was hoped that Russia would accept Stoltenberg’s offer. According to the AFP, a “detailed meeting” between the foreign policy advisor to Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Jens Plötner, and the Russian commissioner for Ukraine, Dmitri Kosak, is planned for the beginning of the year.