Russian Foreign Ministry: Vilnius Summit Shows NATO Back to Cold War Era Behavior

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The results of the NATO summit in Vilnius showed that the alliance is back to the Cold War era behavior for good, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, adding that Moscow will carefully analyze the outcomes of NATO’s decisions.

“It's results demonstrate that the organization has finally returned to the Cold War schemes, only now for the sake of protecting ‘our one billion [people]’ from the other part of humanity and on the basis of the ideology of dividing the world into ‘democracies and autocracies,'” the ministry said in a statement.

Russia plans to carefully analyze the outcomes of the NATO summit, “taking into account the identified challenges and threats to the security and interests” of the country, the ministry added.

“NATO is consistently lowering the threshold for the use of force and strengthening the nuclear component in military planning,” the ministry said. "Spinning a spiral of militarization and exacerbation of military-political tensions for the sake of achieving superiority, NATO continues its provocative policy of expansion. At the center of these NATO aspirations is the further 'natoization' of Ukraine."

"We will respond in a timely and appropriate manner using all means and methods at our disposal. In addition to the decisions already taken, we will continue to strengthen the military organization and the country's defense system."

According to the ministry, Ukraine has a role of the “main expandable material” in NATO’s hybrid war against Russia.

The NATO's Vilnius summit officially kicked off on July 11 and touched on a variety of topics, chief among them continued aid to Ukraine and Sweden's accession to the military bloc.

Also a hot button topic was Ukraine's own entry into the alliance, which was recently prompted tensions after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated that there was no purpose in discussing the matter if Kiev fails to prevail in hostilities.