Leonid Slutsky: “The big press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin has just ended, where not only answers to journalists’ questions were voiced, but very clear signals were again sent to our Western partners.
The most important of them is that it is NATO that must provide security guarantees for Russia. It is not Russian missiles that are deployed along the American borders, but the Alliance countries are on the doorstep of our house with their weapons. And it is not for Washington and Brussels to put forward conditions now.
“Learn history, it contains all the secrets of political sagacity” – one of the most famous quotes of Winston Churchill. But for some reason it is increasingly neglected by our “strategic friends” in the West. In the early 1990s, Russia sacrificed a number of positions in exchange for promises not to expand NATO eastward. But, as the head of state rightly remarked today, Moscow was “cheated, just insolently deceived”. We have witnessed five waves of expansion of the alliance, whose infrastructure is getting closer to our borders. Moreover, the Ukrainian authorities are making every effort to implement the “anti-Russia” project for the sake of new “cookies”, this time in the form of membership in the North Atlantic bloc.
And now the West must give Russia security guarantees, moreover, legally enshrined, not in words. And on all the points proposed by Moscow. And soon.
We look forward to constructive negotiations, which should begin at the beginning of the year in Geneva. For our part, we are ready for inter-parliamentary cooperation, including on this issue, but the ball is also on the side of our colleagues in the United States. “
