The press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov refused to confirm to journalists the authenticity of the responses of the United States and NATO on Russian proposals for security guarantees.
These documents were published today by the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
"We haven't made anything public, and I don't want to comment on it. You need to contact El Pais or the Spanish leadership, I do not know, but at least not to us. We have seen the publication," Peskov said at a briefing.
Earlier, the United States asked Russia not to publish their responses to proposals on security guarantees. Peskov, in a conversation with media representatives today, said that he did not know how the confidential documents ended up with the Spanish edition.
"We do not know, and it is not our business here to guess at the coffee grounds, so I leave no comments here," he said, Vedomosti writes.
At the same time, Peskov recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin "gave a general conceptual assessment" of the responses of the United States and NATO on proposals concerning issues of fundamental importance to Moscow. In particular, the head of state said that Western partners ignored "fundamental Russian concerns."
The latter relate to the rejection of further expansion of NATO, the deployment of strike weapons systems near the Russian borders, as well as the return of the alliance's military infrastructure to the state of 1997, since then the military bloc promised Russia not to move East.
