MOSCOW, July 6. /TASS/. NATO’s confrontational actions towards Russia will be inevitably followed by a military technical response, Russian Permanent Representative to NATO Alexander Grushko said in an interview with the Kommersant daily published on its website on Wednesday.
"A confrontational agenda, in which we are not interested, is being offered to us. NATO should understand that all these measures will have a reverse effect from the military point of view," he said. "Naturally, our military technical is to follow."
According to the Russian diplomat, NATO’s efforts to enhance security of European countries by means of deploying the alliance’s forces on their territories "in fact only undermine this security."
"The very fact that many countries want presence of foreign forces on their territory is a sign of the crisis of European security. For years, the best way to ensure security in Central Europe was withdrawal of foreign forces from their territories," Grushko said.
By building up its activity near the Russian borders, NATO only undermines trust between countries. "The fundamental problem is that no facelift measures to improve trust can cardinally reverse the negative tendencies in the sphere of military security. The situation can be cardinally improved only if NATO abandons its current policy and military activities in the spirit of the cold war containment. Only in this case it will be possible to create an environment to begin a discussion of measures of trust," he said.
Until recently, the Russia-NATO Founding Act of 1997, under which the alliance undertook not to deploy "substantial combat forces" at the border with Russia, has been the basis for security in Central Europe. "Today, NATO is following an opposite course of building up potentials," Grushko said.
The Russian diplomat noted that Russia offered measures to improve the Founding Act but no response has come from NATO. "Russia came out with concrete proposals of how to interpret the term ‘substantial combat forces.’ But no reaction from NATO followed," he said.