Speaking to the state news agency TASS in a report published on Thursday, Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s former Defense Minister and now Secretary to its Security Council, seemed to heavily underscore Moscow’s “red lines” in its dealings with Ukraine, Europe, and NATO.
He reiterated Russia’s oft-repeated refrain that “we are ready for a ceasefire, a truce, and peace talks, but only if our interests and realities ‘on the ground’ are fully taken into account.”
He said it was essential that “the initial causes of the so-called ‘Ukrainian crisis’ were eliminated” and that steps were taken to “ensure Russia’s future security.”
Shoigu said the US administration understood this but that some “Western elites remain determined to prolong military action in Ukraine and were trying to disrupt or compromise the Russian-American dialogue.”
According to Shoigu, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, following the April 4 foreign ministers’ meeting, that the alliance would continue to supply weapons and provide intelligence to Ukraine, adding that Russia would remain a threat to NATO even if the Ukrainian conflict ended.
At the same time, he claimed that the EU leadership was seeking to transform the EU into a military organization aimed against Russia.
In reference to plans of the West’s “coalition of the willing” to deploy peacekeepers to Ukraine in the event of the end of the war in Ukraine, Shoigu said this would be a recipe for a third world war. He said that the placing of foreign troops on “historical Russian lands” was totally unacceptable, saying: “Sensible European politicians understand that any implementation of this scenario would lead to a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.”
He then moved on to broader, strategic issues, which by implication would be impacted by the stationing of NATO troops in Ukraine.
Shoigu said that the November 2024 revisions to Russia’s nuclear doctrine gave it the right to use nuclear weapons “in the event of aggression against it or the Republic of Belarus – including with the use of conventional weapons.”
With this in mind, he said Moscow was “carefully monitoring Europe’s military preparations.”
He then added that should “hostile actions represent a threat to Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” it would “take the appropriate symmetric and asymmetric measures necessary to thwart such actions.”
Shoigu then went on to say Moscow was ready to resume its dialogue with the US on strategic stability issues “provided that all factors influencing security are addressed in a comprehensive manner.”
He said that the current US administration was currently demonstrating readiness to resume talks in this area and that Russia was “ready for this work,” adding, however: “this conversation is possible for us only if we consider comprehensively all the factors affecting security.”
“Their spectrum is broad and includes the issues of NATO expansion, the construction of a global missile defense system, and the deployment of ground-based intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.”