On Thursday, December 2, during the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the OSCE member states in Stockholm, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met, amid growing concern among Western powers that Russia is seeking to invade Ukraine.
The press briefing before the meeting and its final results were published by the press service of the U.S.Embassy in Russia and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation respectively.
Thus, during the meeting, parties exchanged views on the international agenda and topical issues of relations between the United States and Russia.
The Russian Foreign Minister tried to blackmail his American counterpart in matters of the so-called "retraction" of Ukraine in "Washington's geopolitical games against the background of the concertation of NATO member troops to the Russian borders".
Lavrov said that "the actions of the West will have the most serious consequences", and Russia "will be forced to respond in order to ‘correct’ the military-strategic imbalance".
“The fact that everyone is talking about the escalation of tensions in Europe on the border between Russia and Ukraine – well, you know very well how we treat this. We, as President Putin stated, do not want any conflicts, but if our NATO partners have stated that no one has a right to dictate to a country that would like to join NATO whether it can do or not, we can say that every country is able to define its own interests to guarantee their security. And we can refer to the principle of indivisible security envisaged in the EU and NATO documents, which is that no one can guarantee its own security at the expense of the security of others. And NATO’s extension to (inaudible) will infringe upon our security, obviously. This is what we are going to do, but I will stay here,” Lavrov said.
The United States, meanwhile, warned again that there would be "serious consequences" if Russia engages to "pursue confrontation" with Ukraine.
Particular attention from the Russian side was paid during the negotiations to the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin once again stated that Kyiv should fulfill the conditions of the Minsk agreements, including direct negotiations with the occupation administrations in ORDLO.