Russia’s Three Security Meetings Now Set for January

Dec. 29, 2021 (EIRNS)—U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that the dates have now been set for the three meetings to address the security issues raised insistently since Dec. 15 by Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We look forward to engaging with Russia in the Strategic Stability Dialogue on January 10th,” Price stated.

“Additionally, we understand Russia and NATO are intending to hold a NATO-Russia Council meeting on the 12th [of January], and that the OSCE is scheduled to meet [with Russia] on the 13th. We will surely put our concerns on the table. I imagine the Russians will do the same. There will be areas where we can make progress, areas I’m sure where we will disagree.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated on Dec. 28:

“We are now preparing to firmly and effectively pursue the agenda of defending our interests and refusing to make concessions that would be unilateral and that would not take into account the balance of interests. This is what we are proceeding from now when we are getting ready for the negotiations, first of all, with the United States.”

Although Russia’s priority is clearly the meeting with the U.S., they have also expressed some concern over the shape of the NATO meeting. Russia’s First Deputy Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said yesterday that the preparations for the NATO meeting are ongoing. But “with NATO, we need yet to clarify what are the details of this proposal because, as you know, the problem for us all this time was that we wanted to engage military people, and we have our military people ready, but NATO didn’t want to wage this kind of professional dialogue, result oriented.”