“There are many issues on the agenda,” said the Russian presidential spokesman, who added that the leaders will exchange the positions of Moscow and Paris regarding the proposals for security guarantees presented by the Eurasian nation.
“Putin will be ready to continue the discussion that he and Macron started during several phone conversations in recent days, to lay out our concerns, our view of the situation and our understanding of what we have received in response from the United States and NATO,” declared.
According to Peskov, the heads of state must also address bilateral relations, which the Russian side considers very important.
On January 31, the Russian president and his French counterpart agreed by telephone on the possibility of working without delay to organize a personal meeting.
The leaders continued the dialogue that began on January 28 on the situation in Ukraine and issues related to the provision of long-term legal security guarantees to Moscow, based on their proposals to the United States and NATO.
According to the Kremlin statement, Putin re-expounded in detail the principled approaches linked to the proposals made known to Washington and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in mid-December.
Earlier, the Russian leader confirmed that his country would carefully study the West’s written responses to its draft agreements and then Moscow would define subsequent actions.
He stressed that neither the United States nor NATO took Russia’s fundamental concerns into account in those documents, citing as an example the need to prevent the expansion of the Atlantic Alliance and the deployment of attack weapons systems near Russian borders.
He stated that another of the security guarantee initiatives not taken into account is the requirement to return the military potential and infrastructure of the Euro-Atlantic bloc in Europe to the positions of 1997, the year in which the founding act of the Russia-NATO Council was signed. .
Putin explained to Macron that a key question was also ignored: how the United States and its allies intend to follow the principle of indivisibility of security set out in the basic documents of the OSCE and Russia-NATO, which stipulates that no one should strengthen their security. at the expense of the security of other countries.
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