Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he discussed with his American counterpart Joe Biden the conflict in Ukraine and NATO expansion to the East.
He stated this today in Sochi at a press conference with the Prime Minister of Greece, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We really talked about regional issues, we talked about the conflict in the south-east of Ukraine and another sensitive topic related to this situation, namely the expansion of the NATO bloc to the East, including at the expense of Ukraine. This is one of the key issues of ensuring the security of the Russian Federation in the medium term and even strategic perspective.
We talk about this all the time and publicly warn our partners that this is unacceptable for us. Of course, each country has the right to choose the most acceptable method of ensuring security, but this must be done in such a way as not to violate the interests of other parties and not to undermine the security of other countries. In this case, Russia.
It’s the same as in relationships between people. Freedom is an unconditionally given property of every person from the Lord, and it should be limitless, but only until it collides with the freedom of another person. Here certain mutual restrictions must come into force. We proceed from the fact that security must be global - and apply equally to everyone,” Putin said.
According to him, he and the American president agreed to continue communication on this topic.
“This is a topic for another discussion. We agreed that we will continue this discussion and do so in a substantive manner. We will exchange our thoughts on this matter in the near future. Russia will prepare its considerations literally within a few days, within a week. We will forward this to the American side for consideration.
We agreed that an appropriate structure would be created that would be able to deal with this professionally... The conversation was very open, substantive and constructive. I hope that the American side also evaluates the results this way. We have the opportunity to continue the dialogue. This is the most important thing,” the Russian head of state concluded.