Russia accuses the United States of not being interested in improving the security situation in Europe.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday afternoon published its response to the American statement on the draft security treaties with the United States and NATO, which Moscow sent to the West in mid-December.

"We note that the American side has not given a constructive response to the basic elements of the draft security treaty with the United States prepared by the Russian side," the Russian letter said at the beginning.

Reinhard Veser

Editor in Politics.

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In the draft treaty, Russia had called for the renunciation of future expansions of NATO and, above all, for Ukraine and Georgia to have no prospect of accession.

In addition, the Russian leadership is demanding that the entire military infrastructure be returned to the status of 1997, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was adopted before the alliance's first round of enlargement.

According to the Russian response that has now been published, these demands are of principle character for Russia.

Given the unwillingness of the United States and its allies to discuss legally binding security guarantees, "Russia will be forced to react, including measures of a military-technical nature."

The Russian Foreign Ministry notes positively that the American side is ready for talks on arms control, such as limiting medium-range missiles.

Washington has "finally recognized the legitimacy of some Russian proposals and initiatives."

However, Moscow refuses to talk about it unless its demands for the Americans and NATO to withdraw from Eastern Europe are also taken into account: The Russian proposals have “the character of a package and must be viewed as a whole, without individual components being singled out”.

Moscow is expressly demanding the withdrawal of all US troops and military equipment from the Baltic, East-Central Europe and South-Eastern Europe.

“An invasion of Ukraine is not planned”

The conflict with Ukraine takes up a lot of space in the letter.

No Russian invasion of Ukraine is planned.

The accusation made by the West that Russia is responsible for the current escalation is only an attempt to invalidate the Russian proposals.

In its response, the United States expressed "concern" that Russia had breached its obligations to Ukraine under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

At the time, the United States, Britain and Russia jointly guaranteed Ukraine's "independence and sovereignty and existing borders."

In return, Ukraine gave Russia the nuclear weapons that remained on its territory after the end of the Soviet Union.

The Russian statement states that

the Budapest Memorandum has no relation to the "internal-Ukrainian conflict".

The fact that the Ukrainian state has lost part of its territory is “the result of internal processes”.

Crimeans voluntarily joined Russia in 2014 in the face of threats from Western-backed Ukrainian nationalists.

Neither violence nor threats of violence were used.

This, of course, contradicts statements made by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has described in interviews how he set the Russian armed forces in motion to annex Crimea to Russia.

Russia also denies responsibility for the war in eastern Ukraine – here, too, it claims that it is an “internal-Ukrainian conflict”.

Russia is acting as a mediator in this conflict together with Germany and France and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

In order to de-escalate the conflict, Moscow is making demands on the West: the latter must force the Ukrainian government to implement the Minsk agreements of 2014/2015, stop all arms deliveries to Ukraine, take back arms that have already been delivered, withdraw all "Western advisers and instructors". – although it is not specified whether this also applies to civilian advisers to the Ukrainian government – ​​and refrain from any joint NATO exercises with the Ukrainian armed forces.

A withdrawal of Russian troops massed on the border with Ukraine is rejected: "The ultimate demand for a withdrawal of troops from a certain part of Russian territory, accompanied by the threat of increased sanctions,

The principle of "indivisible security" enshrined in OSCE documents, which the Russian government had strongly emphasized in the draft security treaties with NATO and the USA, is only dealt with in a few paragraphs in the reply.

They only repeat the accusation that NATO has violated this principle with its enlargement.