Russian Foreign Ministry: Moscow could sign non-aggression pacts with individual NATO members, with “additional security guarantees”

As the round of trilateral talks on Ukraine was ending in Abu Dhabi, the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow was spelling out the “new security architecture” the Kremlin is seeking. The director of the ministry’s Foreign Policy Planning Department, Alexei Drobinin, said on Wednesday, November 11 that Russia could conclude bilateral agreements of a non-aggression type with individual NATO member states.

The Russian diplomat spoke at the International Forum on Ensuring Collective Security, on the sidelines of which the secretaries-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation met on November 10, according to a post by the Russian Foreign Ministry. His speech became known from a video posted online.

Three “models” for Moscow’s partners

Drobinin described a menu of options for those who would like to take part in what Moscow calls a “Eurasian security architecture”. The common basis, he said, is the mutual recognition that none of the participants has hostile intentions towards another. The first model is defence alliances with a duty of mutual assistance in case of attack, along the lines of the CSTO and Russia’s agreements with Belarus and North Korea. The second is political commitments that neither side will support the other’s adversaries in case of attack, like Moscow’s agreement with Iran.

The third concerns bilateral agreements that meet the criteria of a mutual non-aggression pact. “Such agreements could be reached, among others, with individual NATO member states, which in that case would receive, for example, additional individual security guarantees from the Russian Federation,” Drobinin said. Among the options he also included a mutual commitment not to take part in military action against the other, not to provide territory, transit corridors or industrial capacity for such action, and confidence-building measures of a political and military nature. He did not name any Alliance country that might be interested.

The proposal matters because NATO’s collective defence rests on the principle that an attack on one member is an attack on all. A series of separate Russian “guarantees” to individual members would create parallel bilateral channels with Moscow outside the Alliance framework. The idea of revising European security architecture is not new: Vladimir Putin presented related proposals in December 2021, calling among other things for an end to NATO enlargement.

European security was at the centre of the two days in Abu Dhabi. The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said in remarks published by the Russian Foreign Ministry that the world needs a new security system “not at the expense of certain countries”, without detailing what was discussed. Volodymyr Zelensky told the Danish parliament on Wednesday that when Russians talk about security guarantees for Russia, “they are hardly talking about real security”. For our coverage of the talks, see the first day in Abu Dhabi. These are Russian officials’ statements, reported as made.