Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Ryabkov said that the state of relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is unacceptable to everyone and carries with it the risk of an explosion at any time, and something must be done about it.
Ryabkov said that Russia, by presenting the guarantees initiative, offered NATO and the United States of America (USA) an opportunity to start relations on a new page.
He added, “the Western powers should forget the past, look at everything in a new way, and start writing down our relations from scratch, using as a basis for future agreements what we put on paper and transmitted and published today."
Ryabkov noted that Russia's proposals to the United States and NATO are not an attempt to reconsider the results of the Cold War, because it is not possible to return to the past.
"I would say that this is a review of the expansion against Russia's interests, which the collective West has carried out in different ways, using different forms, different resources, and different partners to achieve anti-Russian purposes in recent years," Ryabkov said.
On the other hand, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg rejected Russia's demands to declare null and void the decision to work on the accession of Ukraine and Georgia to the alliance.
"We are ready to sit around the negotiating table with Russia, but we are not ready to give up the right of countries to join the alliance," Stoltenberg said, during a press conference held Friday with the new German chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Speaking about relations with Ukraine, he said, "NATO's position remains firm."
He indicated that those relations are "based on the principle that every country has the right to choose its own path, including the security measures it wants to be a part of."
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