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Russia to create defense belt near Sochi if Georgia joins NATO

The Russian Foreign Ministry says Russia will have to create a defense belt near Sochi, if Georgia becomes a member of NATO

MOSCOW, October 29. /TASS/. Russia will have to create a defense belt near Sochi, if Georgia becomes a member of NATO, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s European cooperation department, Andrei Kelin, said in an expert discussion NATO’s Future and Russia’s Interests on the platform of the discussion club Valdai.

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"We will have to create a defense belt near Sochi. We will have to spend colossal resources on preventing likely actions by a hypothetical enemy, this is inevitable," Kelin said.

He believes that Ukraine’s accession to the alliance would be an equally serious military and economic problem for Russia.

"The length of our common boarder is enormous. It is utterly unequipped, so we will have to build defense lines there and to shift the emphasis of our defense structures towards the south," he stated.

At the same time he remarked that early accession of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO was very unlikely for the time being.

"But if our western partners proceed along the road of building up confrontation, this may happen, of course, and we will have to make fundamental preparations," he concluded.

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