MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia said on Friday that Western proposals on security guarantees for Ukraine would increase the risk of conflict between Moscow and the West by turning Kyiv into a “strategic provocateur” on Russia’s borders.
Ukraine’s European allies are working to put together a set of guarantees for Ukraine that could be part of a potential peace settlement and would be designed to protect Kyiv from a possible future attack by Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday he expected a framework of the security guarantees to be set out as soon as next week.
“Security guarantees must be based on reaching a common understanding that takes into account Russia’s security interests,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.
She told a news briefing in Moscow that the current proposals were “one-sided and are clearly designed to contain Russia.”
“This line (of proposals) violates the principle of indivisible security and assigns Kyiv the role of a strategic provocateur on Russia’s borders, increasing the risk of the (NATO) alliance becoming involved in an armed conflict with our country.”
Moscow has previously said it does not like the European proposals and will not accept any presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian territory.
(Reporting by Dmitry AntonovWriting by Maxim Rodionov and Lucy PapachristouEditing by Andrew Osborn)
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