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Konstantin Kosachev Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council

The last year has been in many ways a landmark on the international agenda.

Some key figures of the world scene have changed: in the US — a new president, in Germany — a new chancellor, new leaders in Israel and Iran.

The power in Afghanistan changed dramatically, and this change was a loud act of the failure of the 20-year US mission in the republic, the consequences of which will affect for a long time.

In 2021, in contrast to 2020, the coronavirus pandemic, which still influenced all processes in the world, has become a somewhat familiar negative systemic factor in politics and economics, which has to be taken into account in all calculations for the future.

But the most important, in my opinion, events unfolded around the problems of strategic stability and security.

That is why the drafts of a treaty with the United States on security guarantees and an agreement on security measures for Russia and NATO member states, handed over to the American side on December 15, and — which is less usual for classical diplomacy — presented to the world community on December 17, became a powerful final chord of the year.

This unconventional move reflects a picture characteristic of recent years: we are faced with a growing wave of false interpretations and fakes in almost everything that concerns Russia’s foreign policy, its intentions and motives.

Attempts to impose a fictitious agenda to the world have generally become the norm for the present time.

They are trying to present everything that is happening in the form of a growing struggle between democracies and autocracies (“Summit for Democracy”).

They are artificially trying to return Crimea to the list of discussed topics (“Crimean Platform”).

They want to turn the topic of climate change into a kind of instrument of unfair competition and discredit those who are out of step (“Climate Summit”). Then, in a raised voice, they discuss the timing of Russia’s attack on Ukraine as something completely resolved.

The substitution of causes for consequences in general has become a key point in the total mutual misunderstanding between the West and Russia, which led to the most acute crisis in decades, comparable to the Caribbean one.

The reason is allegedly called a certain aggressive policy of Russia towards Ukraine, but in reality everything is exactly the opposite: the Ukrainian story arose as a result of the expansion of the influence of Euro-Atlantic structures to the East, in fact — to our “red lines”.

When Russia is accused of wanting to revive the logic of “spheres of influence”, then this is again a substitution of meaning: Russia, on the contrary, promotes the idea of “spheres of no influence”, refusal of attempts to involve more and more states in military-political structures, which becomes an impartial threat for the Russian Federation.

The wording of Art 1 of the Russian draft agreement with NATO indicates that its participants in relations with each other are guided by the principles of cooperation, equal and indivisible security and do not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of others.

This fully corresponds to what is written in the basic documents in this area, in particular in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990, where, by the way, NATO is never mentioned.

Rejection of the Russian proposals would mean a rejection by Western countries of the generally recognised principles on which European security is based.

And the arguments about the freedom to choose alliances are not the most compelling excuse.

And with freedom, everything is not so simple: often the choice in favour of NATO is not at all a natural course of events, but the result of many years of cultivating elites, leaders of public opinion, injecting considerable funds that otherwise in the West would be branded as corruption.

But here it is called “support for democracy” — in fact, not democracy, but geopolitical reorientation.

And when they say that it was Russia that turned the Ukrainian people in favour of NATO because of its “aggression”, then here too the substitution of causes for consequences: this aggression was invented in order to influence the minds of Ukrainians.

Nevertheless, Russian proposals in the field of security will be the central topic for discussion between the Russian Federation and the United States — NATO for the coming year.

At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin was extremely specific: it would not work to brush it off and “chat”.

There will no longer be many years of waiting for a response to the accompaniment of NATO enlargement. The credit of our trust in the West was completely exhausted precisely in 2021, and this is very serious.

In case of refusal of the United States and NATO to provide security guarantees for Russia, Moscow’s response may be very different, but, as the President stressed, the choice of options will depend on the recommendations of military experts. And refusal to hear us is also an answer.

For the present President Vladimir Putin noted the generally positive reaction from the addressees.

This is encouraging, especially considering that we have another important event of the year: an agreement extending the START-3 Treaty by five years was ratified.

In June, a summit of the presidents of Russia and the United States took place, the dialogue continued via video-conference at the end of the year, and consultations on strategic stability were resumed.

And one more event, which not everyone, probably, recorded for themselves: the UN General Assembly approved without a vote a joint Russian-American resolution on the norms of behaviour in cyberspace and the prevention of crimes in this area.

Considering all sorts of accusations from Washington against us in the cyber sphere, the moment is certainly important.

The event of 2021, which they tried to disrupt in every possible way, was the completion of Nord Stream 2, even though attempts to block the start of its operation did not stop. And it will also be one of the agenda items for 2022. One of the arguments against the Nord Stream 2 in the West is that, they say, the EU’s dependence on Russia will increase.

However, this logic does not take into account the fact that the inverse dependence will grow, and, accordingly, the possibility of influencing Russia.

When there are few connections, interest in dialogue decreases, as we see in the example of relations between Russia and the United States — there is a critically small number of the same congressmen who would lobby the interests of, in particular, American business in Russia.

Hence the ease with which sanctions and new bans are stamped. The main consequence of the economic break with Europe will not be the notorious “change in behaviour” of Russia, but the intensification of its ties with alternative players in the economy and politics.

It is not difficult to predict that the situation in Donbass will also develop depending on the dialogue between Russia and the West.

And not vice versa, as they are trying to instil in the world in the West. The internal conflict in Ukraine can be ended (in this very sense) very quickly — through the dialogue between Kiev and Donetsk and Lugansk, which is what the Minsk package of measures imply.

But for this, the West must realise the exhaustion of political dividends for itself from the theme of “Russian aggression” it is promoting. And this will be possible after reaching agreements on security guarantees — if Ukraine ceases to be the desired prize, then the “aggression” will be quickly curtailed by those who started it in virtual mode — politicians and political strategists of Ukraine and the West.

The year 2021 turned out to be very eventful and milestone in many respects, and from 2022 in this sense we are expecting the outcomes in some directions.

We will work to ensure that the solutions are exclusively diplomatic and anti-crisis. I believe it is possible.

Happy new year!