The reactions of the United States and NATO show that they are not ready to accept Russia's proposal to expand the Alliance to the east. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said this at an urgent meeting of the Russian Security Council.
"We have prepared an assessment of those proposals on security guarantees, about which Russia put forward relevant initiatives to the U.S. and NATO last December. At the end of January we received a reaction, the assessment of this reaction shows that our Western colleagues are not ready to accept our central proposals, primarily with regard to not expanding NATO to the east. This demand is rejected with reference to the Alliance's so-called open door policy and the freedom of the state to choose its security options," the minister said.
"No alternative to this key provision is offered in either the U.S. or NATO response," he added.
At the same time, he noted that the U.S. and NATO had expressed a willingness to engage in dialogue on a number of other issues.
"Summing up the assessment of these responses, we can state that there is progress. They are not substantial, but they are there. In this context, we assume that the work should continue," Lavrov added, noting that Russia had only responded to letters from the United States, as the NATO line was considered "auxiliary".
