Russia FM: NATO violates founding act building up military presence near Russian borders

MOSCOW, November 19. /TASS/. NATO is building up the presence of its heavy armaments on Russia’s border in violation of the founding act, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview on Radio Russia radio station.

"The document says that such forces will not be deployed in the territories of the newly-adopted members on the permanent basis," Lavrov said. "All sorts of tricks are being used in attempts to sidestep this. We are being told these are not permanent forces, but just rotation."

"But does it really make any difference if one brigade replaces another one, armed lock stock and barrel, every six months? This will certainly not add to stability," Lavrov said. "This fits in well with the logic of finding an enemy image in order to bolstering control of extra political spaces more intensively."

NATO actively looking for new enemy after Afghan campaign failed

The minister pointer out that NATO is trying to regain the purpose of existence after the failure of the Afghan campaign, and is actively looking for new enemies.

"When our Western partners are advancing the slogan ‘either with us or against us’, addressing it to our neighbors, including countries of the former Soviet Union, this is in fact a disguised means to turn somebody into an enemy," he said.

"NATO is now actively looking for an enemy, because it has once again started searching the purpose of its existence after the Afghan campaign failed," he said.

He said decadent moods could be seen in NATAO after Afghanistan, with questions asked "was it worth going there at all?" and "what are we going to do now?"

"Coming handy was a coup in Ukraine, loud statements that the Russian language would be banned and that Russians had nothing to do in Crimea," he explained.

NATO using ‘tricks’ in attempts to sidestep agreements with Russia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dubbed as ‘tricks’ NATO’s attempts to build up its presence on the Russian borders in bypassing mutual agreements on relations, cooperation and security.

"NATO is building up its hardware, heavy armaments on the border with Russia in violation of the Founding Act which says such forces will not be deployed on the territory of its new members on a permanent basis," he told Russia’s Radio on Thursday.

"All sorts of tricks are being used in attempts to sidestep this. We are being told these are not permanent forces, but just rotation," he said.

"But does it really make any difference if one brigade replaces another one, armed lock stock and barrel, every six months? This will certainly not add to stability," Lavrov noted. "This fits in well with the logic of finding an enemy image in order to bolstering control of extra political spaces more intensively."

Adopting the new countries, NATO pledged that no substantial combat forces would be deployed in these countries, he said. "And now we are being told these are not permanent forces but rotation. All the more, this can be done because of ‘Russian aggression’ and so on and so forth," he said. "The same happens in action and positions of certain Western states. I have already cited a slogan put forward in respect to our neighbours - ‘either with us, with Europe, with the West, or against us’," he concluded.