Karen Donfried
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried (front-right) arrives at the offices of the Russian Foreign Ministry on December 15.
Russia has presented the United States with a set of proposals for binding Western security guarantees during a meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried in Moscow on December 15, the Kremlin said.

Donfried, who traveled to Moscow after holding talks with officials in Kyiv on a major Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, said in a video posted on Twitter that the United States will share Russia's proposals with its allies and partners.


Comment: Russian troops indeed were positioned over a hundred miles from its border with Ukraine, ostensibly for a training exercise, but it's also likely that this served as a response and a warning to NATOs recent maneuvers on Russia's border.


Ukraine and its Western backers have raised concerns that Russia may be preparing an invasion of its neighbor, something Moscow has denied.


Comment: The threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine has been entirely manufactured by the West.


The Kremlin, which says that a new eastward NATO enlargement would threaten Russia, has demanded guarantees that the alliance will not expand further eastwards or deploy advanced weaponry in Ukraine and other countries that border Russia.

Washington and Kyiv have repeatedly said that no one has the right to veto Ukraine's desire to join the Western alliance.

NATO says its activities are defensive and meant to discourage new Russian aggression after Moscow in 2014 illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimea region and has been backing pro-Russian separatists who seized a swath of eastern Ukraine that same year.


Comment: Crimea overwhelmingly voted to rejoin the Russian federation following the US-backed coup in Ukraine, and its citizens haven't looked back since.


"American representatives were literally today handed concrete proposals in our Foreign Ministry that are aimed at developing legal security guarantees for Russia," Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters.

"We are ready to start negotiations on this crucial issue immediately," Ushakov told reporters.

Donfried met Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov for talks in the ministry earlier on December 15.