The creation of a new security architecture in Eurasia proposed by Russia will force external players to curtail their military presence on the continent, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing on the sidelines of the 12th St. Petersburg International Legal Forum.
Being drawn into a new bloc confrontation in the spirit of zero-sum games is not the intention of the Russian Federation,” she noted.
The Eurasian security architecture proposed by Russia will not be directed against anyone, its parameters will ensure long-lasting peace and avoid major geopolitical upheavals due to the crisis of globalization built on Western patterns. It will create reliable military-political guarantees for the protection of both the Russian Federation and other countries of the macro-region from external threats, create a space free from conflicts and favorable for development, and eliminate the destabilizing influence of extra-regional players on Eurasian processes in the future.
In the future, this will mean curtailing the military presence of external powers in Eurasia, according to Zakharova.
The initiative to create a new continent-wide security architecture in the Eurasian space was put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The essence of this initiative is to establish “a constructive dialogue between all potential participants in the future security system in the Greater Eurasia space.
Russia proceeds from the fact that geographical proximity encourages a joint search for ways of peaceful coexistence, and believes that such a system should be open to all Eurasian countries that wish to take part in it, including Western European ones. However, this participation will depend on whether they abandon their confrontational course towards Russia.
If we don’t start working on a new security system now, this will lead to the loss of dialogue skills, those mechanisms that were developed and, in principle, laid down as effective but were destroyed by the hegemonic aspirations of the West. This will bring problems that are much more difficult to cope with later than now.
Zakharova emphasized that Russia is ready for a dialogue on this issue with all interested parties, including Western European countries.