Moscow, Feb 15 : Russia came up with security guarantee proposals for the United States and NATO to head off a war in Europe, President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday after hosting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Moscow. “As for whether we want this, of course not. That is why we proposed negotiations that should result in an arrangement guaranteeing equal security for all, including our country,” Putin told a news conference after he was asked whether a war was looming over Europe.
Chancellor Scholz said his generation could not imagine a war in Europe. Putin said he belonged to the same generation, which witnessed NATO bombing Serbia in 1999 in what was then Yugoslavia. “We have witnessed a war in Europe that NATO conducted against Yugoslavia — a large-scale military operation to drop bombs on Belgrade, a European capital. It happened without UN’s approval. It is a very bad example,” Putin said. The US-led military alliance justified its decision to launch the aerial campaign without UN’s approval saying it was a humanitarian intervention. Air attacks killed more than 1,000 people, many of them civilians.
(With UNI Inputs)
