Expert: US must stop surrounding Russia and accept security guarantees – Society
NEW YORK, December 31. / Corr. TASS Grigory Sapozhnikov /. The US and NATO must accept Russian proposals for security in Europe, which will put an end to the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance to the east and enter into force of this military bloc. This opinion was expressed on Friday in a conversation with a TASS correspondent by the representative of the Schiller Institute in New York, Richard Black, commenting on the results of a telephone conversation on December 30 between Russian presidents Vladimir Putin and the United States, Joe Biden, as well as the upcoming Russian-American consultations in Geneva in January.
The Schiller Institute fully supports Russia’s proposals for the US and NATO to sign documents by President Vladimir Putin that would stop NATO’s eastward expansion. [процесс] Ukraine’s entry into the alliance and the use of Ukrainian territory as a military base for offensive positioning against Russia, the American expert said. – It is quite obvious that the encirclement of Russia, including through nuclear weapons, is driving the country into a corner. The danger of a regional conflict escalating into a nuclear war is very high. “
In his opinion, today there is a semblance of the Caribbean crisis in the world. “Only now is the West deploying advanced offensive weapons on land, at sea and in airspace near Russian borders. <...> The US and NATO must stop the policy of encircling Russia, ”the agency’s source said.
Representative of the “Schiller Institute” Assessment of the early conclusion of agreements on security guarantees. In this scenario, Black, Russia, the United States and the United States are the way to start multilateral cooperation on urgent common challenges.
Regional challenges
Black drew particular attention to the proposal of the Council of the Russian State to convene a summit of the UN Security Five. “President Putin has repeatedly and offered to hold a summit of the Five over the past two years. Both powers are facing each other.”
Among the main problems, he singled out the coronavirus pandemic, the situation in Afghanistan, international terrorism and drug trafficking. “It is absolutely in the interest of the two countries to work together, as well as with China and India, to immediately unfreeze [финансовые] funds for the Afghan population. <...> Afghanistan will become a nightmare for the whole world, both from the point of view of international terrorism and the spread of drugs, “the expert said.
Contacts of Russia and the USA
On Friday night, telephone conversations between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden took place. They lasted 50 minutes.
On January 10, negotiations between the Russian Federation and the United States on security guarantees are planned in Geneva. In addition, a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council will take place on January 12, and talks between representatives of the Russian Federation and the OSCE will take place on January 13. On December 17, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs published the draft US security guarantee treaty and an agreement on security measures for the Russian Federation and NATO member states. They were handed over to US Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried on December 15.