MOSCOW, September 4 (RIA Novosti) - NATO is taking a course that could negatively affect regional and global security, despite having no real grounds for increasing the alliance’s activities, Russia’s Permanent Representative to NATO Alexander Grushko said in an interview with Euronews.
“NATO takes a course which could seriously weaken regional and global security. On one hand, NATO begins military preparations against Russia. On the other hand, NATO reduces its own ability to cooperate with Russia over the problems which NATO cannot efficiently deal with on its own without interaction with international players including Russia, ” said Grushko in an interview released Thursday.
Grushko has characterized Russia’s attitude toward NATO’s plans to increase its military presence in Eastern Europe as absolutely negative. He added that Moscow has repeatedly expressed its concern about the organization’s increased presence near Russian borders.
“This worries us for many reasons. First of all, there is no ground for increased NATO activities,” Grushko said.
On Thursday and Friday, a NATO summit will take place in Newport, Wales, gathering 60 world leaders among thousands of delegates. The summit’s agenda will include the discussion of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, NATO’s relations with Russia, the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, enhancing the collective defense of the alliance and the activities of Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria.
Even though the majority of topics directly concern Moscow, Russia was not invited to participate in the summit, as, according to some sources, its presence was deemed “unreasonable.”
