NEW YORK, March 18. /TASS/. The US and its allies have set up a direct communication line with Moscow in order to avoid a conflict between Russia and NATO due to any misunderstanding over hostilities on the Ukrainian border, Bloomberg reported Friday.
According to NATO representatives cited by the news agency, Russian armed forces made no provocations or attempts to engage the alliance’s forces.
However, US allies want to rule out any potential dangerous incident, and, to that extent, they deploy Patriot air defense systems and reinforce their patrols, Bloomberg explains.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories.