/ world today news/ Russia’s requests for security guarantees to the US and NATO include the withdrawal of troops and weapons from foreign countries, including Bulgaria and Romania. This was stated in the response of the Russian Foreign Ministry to media issues, published on the agency’s website on January 21.
“We are talking about the withdrawal of foreign forces, equipment and armaments and other steps to return to the configuration of 1997 on the territory of countries that were not NATO members on that date. They include both Bulgaria and Romania,” the ministry said.
Last December, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published draft agreements with the US and NATO on security guarantees for Russia.
They indicate the obligation of the alliance to exclude further advance in the east and to refuse to deploy weapons systems that threaten Russia outside the countries where they were in 1997 (that is, until the signing of the Russia-NATO act, which provides for a ban on the deployment of nuclear weapons on the territory of the new members of the military bloc).
Since then, 14 countries have joined the union, mostly former socialist countries and post-Soviet republics: in 1999, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic; in 2004 – Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Estonia; in 2009 – Albania and Croatia; in 2017 – Montenegro, and in 2020 – North Macedonia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly criticized the deployment of the US Aegis Ashore missile defense system in Romania. Putin claims that the complex is not a defense system but part of the US nuclear potential and therefore threatens Russia’s national security.
Both the US and NATO have previously said the alliance will not accept the withdrawal of its military from the 1997 positions. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, this would mean that half of the bloc’s members could not be protected by its troops . “Then they will be kind of second-class members of NATO, we will never do that,” Stoltenberg explained in an interview with CBC published on January 16.
A series of consultations held in Europe last week failed to reach agreements on non-enlargement of NATO and the withdrawal of military infrastructure. This week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that Russia is waiting for a response to each article of the drafts.
Translation: PI
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