The West does not take seriously Russia’s warning not to cross the “red lines”, Vladimir Putin believes. He named several ways of how to solve the problem.
On November 18, Vladimir Putin spoke at the expanded meeting of the collegium of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
The West crosses all of Russia’s red lines
The flights of NATO strategic bombers armed with a very serious weapon at a distance of 20 kilometers from the Russian state border are part of those red lines, he said.
“Our concerns and warnings about NATO’s eastward expansion were completely ignored,” the president said.
Red line No. 2:
“In Romania and Poland, they have deployed air defense systems that can easily be used as strike systems. Changing software is a matter of five minutes.”
Red line No. 3: Putin accused NATO of exacerbating the situation by supplying arms to Kiev and conducting military maneuvers in the Black Sea region.
“We constantly express our concerns about this, but we understand that our partners have their peculiarities and they treat our warnings and red lines superficially,” Putin said.
How to make the West respect Russia?
According to Putin,
“The West should be kept in a state of tension because of the warnings coming from Russia, so that it does not occur to them to arrange any unnecessary conflict on our western frontiers. We do not need any conflicts.” (Putin is most likely speaking about a demonstration of combat readiness here. Clearly, Russia will do everything to avoid war, but Russia is ready for it.)
“It is about time we should have serious long-term security guarantees. Russia can not simply live and think about what may happen there tomorrow,” the president said.
The West will not guarantee Russia anything
It is doubtful that the West may give such guarantees. They can be valid only in writing. Western politicians may lift their guarantees easily, as was the case with EU’s agreement with Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 on a political settlement of the crisis in Ukraine. More recently, Germany and France refused to conduct direct dialogue with the People’s Republic of Donetsk and Luhansk within the framework of the Normandy format contrary to the Minsk Accords.
What can the West guarantee at all? Russia needs to have guarantees that Ukraine will not be incorporated into the NATO bloc. This would be the worst scenario that Russia will have to respond to with real action, as Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov once said. It is worthy of note that NATO is already present in Ukraine, so it will only continue expanding its presence there.
Concerns are not enough, real action is required
Of course, one should express concerns, but one needs to act too. Russia could stop recognising the legitimacy of Ukraine’s next government or recognise the independence of Ukraine’s breakaway republics if the West continued cross Russia’s red lines.
Russia could also support China in its confrontation with the Anglo-Saxons. China will win this confrontation, and guarantees from losing globalists in the UN Security Council could be possible. India is a weak link in the new American anti-Chinese coalition, and Russia could take advantage of it through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and other Eurasian integration structures.
Needless to say that the Russian authorities should deal with domestic affairs too.
Moscow will not see justice
“Russia will proactively participate in international efforts to counter common challenges and threats. Among them, unfortunately, there is still terrorism and cross-border crime, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, poverty, inequality, climate change and environmental degradation,” Vladimir Putin said.
“As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Russia intends to continue to firmly uphold the fundamental principles of the UN Charter: sovereignty and equality of states, non-interference in their internal affairs, just settlement of disputes and, of course, UN’s key role in resolving international problems,” he added.
Unfortunately, justice is an abstract concept that the pro-Western legal system does not interpret in Russia’s favor.
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