“To the sunny world - yes! Yes! Yes! Nuclear explosion - no! No! No!" - a familiar radio voice sang in my childhood. It was felt that the Russians, the Soviet people zealously, with all their hearts, as they say now, were drowning for peace. And we, the children of the 1970s, believed that everything would be fine. Although we were preparing for the worst. "Flash to the right!" - shouted the school military instructor, training us to survive in a nuclear flame. I am sure if this happened, they would have survived, and then won. Then the politicians, albeit at a considerable cost, managed to save the planet from catastrophe, prolong life on it for another half century.

But nothing lasts forever. Now the world is at about the same point. It's about to begin ... "In conditions when our relations have come to a dangerous critical line through the fault of Washington, it is urgent to take concrete steps to reduce the degree of confrontation," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said at a briefing on Russia's initiatives on December 17 on security guarantees. Everyone can evaluate Moscow's proposals for himself. Our diplomats have published draft treaties between Russia and the United States and NATO, which have already been transferred to the opposite side.

Russia proposes to roll back the situation, in 1997, when the parties refused to consider each other as opponents and Russia's membership in the alliance was not even ruled out. The realism of the latter circumstance can be assessed in different ways, but this is undoubtedly the same point of balance when both sides did not have serious claims to each other. But then there was Washington's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty (in Munich, Vladimir Putin rebuked the West for this) and the decision of the NATO Bucharest summit to include Ukraine and Georgia in the bloc in the future. So who started first?

Concrete steps proposed by Moscow follow from this. Russia insists on refusing to admit to NATO the states that were previously part of the USSR (Ukraine in the first place), and prohibiting the development of "bilateral military cooperation" with these countries. There can be no talk of any NATO advance eastward. The parties must refuse to deploy intermediate and shorter-range missiles in areas from where they can strike each other's territory, must not deploy nuclear weapons abroad and return those already deployed to their homes. There are other measures as well.

An important circumstance: by offering to negotiate on a bilateral basis with the United States and NATO, Russia is by no means going to substitute this for the prerogatives of the UN Security Council to maintain international peace and security.

Thus demonstrating to the international community, to all countries, young and old, that their opinion, the voice of the powerful are not at all ignored, but, on the contrary, are taken into account.

Reasonable.

Moreover, among the permanent members of the Security Council there is China, even the silence of which is now no less convincing than the clearly expressed position.

Both agreements, Ryabkov stressed, should be considered as a complex.

Treat them like a menu: they say, I want it, this is good, but this is not, it is impossible.

Moscow is ready to start discussing its proposals even tomorrow, Saturday, December 18, the diplomat noted, demonstrating the political will of the Russian side to resolve not only its own problems, but also issues important for the entire international community. Geneva was proposed as a place for negotiations - a platform where the world's most complex knots have been untied more than once. Our team is already ready.

As of the evening of December 17, Russia does not mark a change in the position of the United States and NATO countries on the documents submitted by the Russian side.

Well, that was to be expected.

Let's wait a little longer.

But in any case, the formulated position of Russia is a kind of ideal, having familiarized themselves with which the world will understand who really cares about world security, and who would like to continue to live and behave according to the traditions of the conquistadors and colonialists.

And if earlier the West, which possessed superior military and economic power, could ignore this circumstance, now the situation is changing before our eyes.

So it's better in an amicable way ...

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.