European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell speaks at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, on June 19, 2021. (Photo by Reuters)

The European Union (EU) has rejected Russia’s security demands for stopping NATO’s eastward expansion as unacceptable.

In an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Josep Borrell said, Demands about security guarantees and stopping the EU and NATO’s eastward expansion are a purely Russian agenda with completely unacceptable conditions, especially regarding Ukraine.

He said Moscow had presented its demands in written form for the first time. Only the winners do this: they say that this and that are my conditions, he said.

Earlier in December, Russia sent the US and NATO a proposal that included security guarantees it wanted in order to defuse tensions over Ukraine.

In his remarks at a briefing for military attaches and representatives of foreign embassies in Moscow on Monday, Russian Deputy Minister of Defense Alexander Fomin asserted that the alliance’s targeted provocations near Russia’s borders had been completely re-orientated toward preparing for a large-scale, high-intensity armed conflict with Russia.

NATO has consistently ignored Russian interests, and shied away from conducting an equitable discussion of existing problems, Fomin said, adding, The alliance’s continuation of a confrontational course towards our country forces us to rigidly put before NATO the issue of legally binding security guarantees for Russia, which would exclude any further advances of the bloc to the east and deployment of threatening weapons systems in the immediate vicinity of our borders.

Russia and the US-led NATO have recently been at odds over Ukraine among other issues. The US claims a Russian military buildup near Ukraine is preparation for an invasion. Moscow rejects the allegation, but has warned that Ukraine joining NATO is a red line.