MOSCOW, December 1. /TASS/: Russia suggests opening detailed talks on legal guarantees to stop NATO’s eastward expansion, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
"Our diplomats are currently faced with the prime task of obtaining reliable and long-term security guarantees," Putin said speaking at a ceremony of receiving foreign ambassadors’ credentials in Moscow.
"Within the frames of the dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will be insisting on concrete agreements, which exclude any possible NATO expansion to the East, and the deployment of any weapons that threaten us and are deployed in the approximate vicinity of the Russian territory. We suggest starting detailed talks on this issue."
The Russian president stressed that "legal guarantees are exactly what Russia needs because Western colleagues failed to fulfill their earlier voiced verbal commitments."
Putin said that everyone knows very well the previously voiced verbal commitments against NATO’s eastward expansion.
"However, everything was done in the exact opposite way," he continued. "In fact, Russia’s legally voiced concerns in the sphere of security had been ignored and they are still being ignored."
The Russian president also expressed his concern in regard to the behavior of some countries, which continue whipping up tensions near Russia’s western borders.
"We are concerned not only with the uncoordinated behavior of the global society, which cannot unite to solve truly important problems," he said. "We are also concerned with the way they behave in regard to our country, Russia, because some of our partners resort to all attempts to restrain our development, to exert pressure in the form of sanctions and, moreover, to fuel tensions at our borders."
