Russia blames West for European security crisis over NATO talks

The crisis in European security was provoked by the West, which drew a line under Russia's previous security system, Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday in a statement, Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said Western countries rejected a draft agreement on relations between Russia and NATO that Moscow proposed in 2009.

It also said the West turned down a 2021 initiative to draft a security guarantees agreement with the United States and an agreement with NATO on security measures.

The ministry said the crisis required Russia to take decisive protective measures in the form of a special military operation.

The ministry said Russia has repeatedly tried to join Euro-Atlantic structures as an equal member, but those attempts were rejected.

It accused NATO countries and the European Union of destroying the military-political dimension of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, known as the OSCE.

The ministry also said assurances given to the Soviet leadership that NATO would not expand east were effectively disavowed.

The statement was issued under the title "On the Efforts of the USSR and Russia to Establish Collective Security."

In June 2024, President Vladimir Putin proposed creating a new architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia, the ministry said.

Building on that proposal, Russia, Belarus, Vietnam, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Myanmar and Tajikistan announced in September 2026 that they had begun work on a Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century at the 81st session of the UN General Assembly.

The ministry said the charter is meant to unite existing cooperation bodies, including the CIS, CSTO, SCO, ASEAN and GCC, around principles of sovereign equality and the rejection of dominance by any single power or group of states.