Kremlin calls Western security assurances for Ukraine a dangerous mistake
World
Kremlin calls Western security assurances for Ukraine a dangerous mistake
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday that security assurances the West is planning to offer Ukraine would be a dangerous mistake that would impinge on Russia's own security and expose Europe to greater risks for years ahead.
G7 countries are expected on Wednesday to announce an international framework that would pave the way for long-term security assurances for Ukraine to boost its defences against Russia and deter future aggression, officials said.
The specific security assistance and assurances are expected to vary from country to country. President Joe Biden has spoken about using U.S. support for Israel as a possible model.
Russia, which is staunchly opposed to Ukraine ever joining NATO, says ensuring its own security in the face of what it casts as an ever-expanding Western military alliance and a hostile and increasingly militarised Kyiv, was one of the main reasons why it last year launched what it calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine.
Kyiv says it needs all the help it can from the West to push back against what it casts as a brutal war of conquest.
Commenting on the proposed security assurances for Kyiv, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it would be a mistake that Moscow would be forced to factor into its decision-making.
"We consider this to be badly mistaken and potentially very dangerous," Peskov told reporters.
"Because by providing any kind of security guarantees for Ukraine, these countries would be ignoring the international principle on the indivisibility of security. By providing guarantees to Ukraine, they would be impinging on the security of the Russian Federation," he said.
'A MORE DANGEROUS EUROPE'
It was impossible for Moscow to tolerate anything that threatened its own security, Peskov added, saying he hoped that politicians in the West would realise the risks attached to providing Ukraine with such assurances, a move he said would carry "highly negative consequences."
"By taking such a decision, these countries will make Europe much more dangerous for many many years to come. And of course, they will do a disservice to us, something we will take into account."
Some pro-Kremlin figures gloated at the fact that NATO a day earlier had told Ukraine that it could join "when conditions are met" while stopping short of naming a date or exact conditions.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was a lesson for Kyiv which she said proved that the West made up its own rules of the game to fit its agenda. "This is the 'rules-based order' invented by Westerners," Zakharova wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
"Smarter people don't take part in it, since there are no rules - they are invented on the go, and they change if the game doesn't bring the desired result," she said.
Konstantin Kosachyov, deputy chairman of Russia's upper house of parliament, said the outcome was a humiliation for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, alleging that NATO was exploiting Kyiv to wage war on Russia while keeping it out because of the risk of nuclear confrontation.
"In the end, Kyiv was shown its place: to serve as expendable material, to destroy its soldiers for NATO without guarantees of membership in it, and in general to keep its distance from the alliance for now because Ukraine clearly 'smells' of a nuclear war in which 'real' Europeans will die," Kosachyov wrote on Telegram.
