Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that the U.S. and its allies have ignored Russia's top security demands.
In his first comments on the standoff with the West over Ukraine in more than a month, Putin said the Kremlin is still studying the U.S. and NATO's response to the Russian security demands they received last week.
But he said it was clear that the West has ignored the Russian demands that NATO will not expand to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations, refrain from deploying offensive weapons near Russia and roll back NATO deployments to Eastern Europe.
Putin said the refusal by the U.S. and its allies to heed the Russian demands violate the obligations on integrity of security they made at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He argued that while Western allies emphasize every country's freedom to choose alliances, they neglect the principle of the "indivisibility of security" enshrined in the OSCE documents.
That involves the principle that the security of one nation should not be strengthened at the expense of others.
Putin also said on Tuesday he hoped dialogue on Ukraine would continue in order to avoid "negative scenarios" including war.
At a news conference, Putin raised the possibility of war between Russia and NATO if Ukraine joined the alliance and then attempted to take back Crimea from Russia by force.
"Let's imagine Ukraine is a NATO member and starts these military operations. Are we supposed to go to war with the NATO bloc? Has anyone given that any thought? Apparently not," he said.
Putin said ways needed to be found to protect everyone's security.
"I hope that in the end we will find a solution, although it will not be simple," Putin said, indicating he was ready for more talks with the West, which has accused Moscow of massing more than 100,000 troops on the border and plotting to invade Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters after talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin also said Washington's main goal was to contain Russia.
"It seems to me that the United States is not so much concerned about the security of Ukraine... but its main task is to contain Russia's development," Putin said.
"In this sense, Ukraine itself is just a tool to reach this goal. This could be done in various ways," he said, including by getting Russia involved in an armed conflict.
The Russian leader said that if Ukraine joined NATO Russia could be sucked into an armed conflict with the military alliance over Moscow-annexed Crimea.
Putin also said that French President Emmanuel Macron could come to Moscow for talks "in the near future".
