Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, is so dissatisfied with the answers from NATO and the United States that he has now demanded answers from the United States, Canada and a number of individual countries in Europe, including Norway.
VG reported earlier Tuesday that Russia has sent a letter to Norway. On Monday, a version of the letter, addressed to Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt (Labor Party), was delivered to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by a diplomat from the Russian embassy.
Tuesday night has Russian Foreign Ministry published an English version of the letter.
“The United States and NATO’s responses to our proposals show serious differences in understanding the principles of equal and indivisible security,” Lavrov wrote in a letter to US, Canadian and foreign ministers.
The letter is written after that the responses from NATO and the United States were sent to Moscow Wednesday last week.
“We believe it is necessary to clarify this immediately, because it will be crucial for the prospects for further dialogue,” the Russian Foreign Minister wrote.
He now contacts the countries individually, on the grounds that they have each signed the documents that Russia mentions.
Indivisible security
The principle of indivisible security, to which Russia refers, is mentioned in a statement from 1999, from the member states of the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
The Istanbul Document states that all states are free to choose their own security policy anchoring – or to be neutral.
But the document, the Istanbul document, also states that no country can strengthen its own security at the expense of the security of others. It is this sentence that Lavrov now sends to each member state and asks for an explanation.
– Russia’s message over several years has been the claim that NATO’s enlargement to the east has taken place at the expense of Russia’s own security, and that it is thus contrary to the principle of indivisible security, said postdoctoral fellow and Russia researcher Kristin Ven Bruusgaard at the University of Oslo to VG earlier Tuesday.
– Seriously worried
In the letter, Lavrov describes how Russia is seriously concerned about its own security with increasing political and military unrest at its western borders.
With clear reference to NATO’s deployment of military forces in the alliance’s eastern member states, Russia demanded in December that these forces be withdrawn. At the same time, Russia demanded written guarantees that Ukraine could never join NATO.
Both demands have been flatly rejected by both the United States and NATO.
It will not happen
Russia’s foreign minister is now accusing Western countries of picking the parts of international documents that suit them – “namely the right to freely choose alliances solely to safeguard their own security” and thus without regard to Russia.
Russia does not intend to find itself in this from now on, according to the letter.
“It will not happen. The core of the agreements on indivisible security is that either there is security for everyone, or there is no security for anyone “, Lavrov writes.
The Russian foreign minister is now asking that each country quickly clarify in writing whether they intend to fulfill what Russia believes are written obligations, as the situation is now.
He also asks countries to clarify if they do not feel obligated.
A spokesman for NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told VG earlier Tuesday that a number of member countries have received similar letters from Russia, and that NATO is considering possible answers.
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