Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s opening remarks during talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Geneva, January 21, 2022

Mr Secretary of State,

Colleagues,

We are grateful to you for your proposal to hold a meeting in Geneva in the context of the work that began on security guarantee proposals.

When you called me and suggested that we meet so that you could get a clearer view of our concerns, we thought it was a good idea. We hope that this meeting will help you to prepare concrete replies to all our proposals and come up with counterproposals, if any. 

Yesterday and today, we read an immense amount of Department of State materials on what you call “Russia’s disinformation on a huge scale.” I found it interesting to familiarise myself with these materials. I hope that not everyone at the State Department was involved in this effort and that someone was focused on the substance of our proposals that we submitted to you.

In a recent statement made during your European tour, you said that you were not expecting a breakthrough from this meeting. We are not expecting a breakthrough from this meeting either. What we are expecting are replies to our proposals. They are utterly concrete. We expect equally concrete replies, in line and in full conformity with the commitments assumed at the top level within the OSCE with regard to the indivisibility of security. These commitments state that no country should strengthen its security at the expense of any other country’s security.

It would be interesting to hear how the United States interprets these commitments.