Ryabkov Affirms, We Are Not Bluffing

Dec. 27, 2021 (EIRNS)—Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov volunteered to assist the West digest what is being said: Moscow is not bluffing when it says that NATO expansion must be stopped. On Monday morning, Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn (International Affairs) magazine published his interview, and, according to TASS, was emphatic:

“When we say loud and clear that we demand an official withdrawal of the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest summit relating to Ukraine and Georgia’s [intentions] to join NATO, when we say that further expansion of NATO needs to be prevented, when we say that NATO facilities and all kinds of activities that are provocative for Russia need to be rolled back to the positions that existed in 1997 when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed, we are not bluffing. These are our real proposals. The West’s awareness of this needs to be facilitated and we are going to make every effort to achieve it.”

There’s a New Year’s resolution one can believe in.