NATO’s turn against Russia plotted long before Ukraine events — diplomat

MOSCOW, June 30. /TASS/. NATO’s return to the Cold War era security perception was planned long before the Ukrainian crisis, Russia’s envoy to the alliance, Alexander Grushko, said on Tuesday.

"Today, the whole NATO machine is in fact turning to the East, in other words is going back to the sources. This is an extremely dangerous tendency as it envisages long-term trends," he told a video link-up between Moscow and Brussels.

"NATO links the need for such a turn to Russia’s alleged aggressive actions in Ukraine," the diplomat said. "But NATO cannot but see what efforts are made by Russia to ensure the full implementation of the Minsk agreements."

"However, those decisions that are taken are no way linked to the Ukrainian crisis, what is becoming another evidence that the military and political turn of NATO was devised long before the Ukrainian events," he said.

This turn comes first of all as the "epoch of major operations is over, showing NATO’s failure to adopt to new security conditions." In order to prove that this tool is still in demand, "the alliance has found nothing better than to return to the security perception of the Cold War time."