BRUSSELS (Sputnik) — The latest NATO decisions, taken at the Alliance's summit in Warsaw, turn Eastern European states into forward deployment areas, Russian Permanent Representative to NATO Alexander Grushko said Wednesday.
"The danger is that today the [NATO] confrontational policy, based of a mythical threat coming from Russia, takes shape of military planning and military preparations at our borders. Actually, the territory of the Eastern European members of the Alliance, which have declared themselves front-line, is turning into the forward deployment base and putting military and political pressure on Russia," Grushko told reporters.
According to Grushko, NATO plunges the Russia-Eastern Europe relations into a military "dimension", which has never existed.
"At first, NATO makes a decision to expand, to adopt new members, then it starts to develop the territories of the new members in military and technical terms, to deploy additional potentials under the pretext that they should be protected. This leads to the situation that we could find ourselves in a spiral of an arms race that is unwanted by everyone," Grushko said.
"All members of the NATO-Russia Council have recognized that there is no alternative to political resolution of the Ukrainian crisis and that it is necessary to do everything possible to provide full implementation of the Minsk package [of agreements]," Grushko told reporters after the Russia-NATO Council meeting in Brussels.
According to Grushko, during the Council meeting the Russian side noted that NATO's political and military support to Ukraine was "encouraging the war party in Kiev and warming up revanchist aspirations."
Leaders of the 28 NATO nations agreed last week to deploy four multinational battalions to the countries bordering Russia on a rotational basis. Russia warned this would undermine security in the region.
