MOSCOW, June 25. /ITAR-TASS/. NATO’s Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has come up with a number of harshly worded statements addressed to Russia at a meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers in Brussels.
For instance, he said that NATO saw “no signs that Russia is respecting its international commitments” over Ukraine. One cannot but take note of the fact that the statement comes the day after Russian President Vladimir Putin asked the Federation Council to rescind its consent to the use of military force in Ukraine. Rasmussen interpreted that request as a new type of military tactic against Ukraine. NATO’s chief did not bother to explain what the gist of that tactic was, though. He merely added that NATO’s foreign ministers would consider the alliance’s likely response to security threats allegedly coming from Russia.
One might have made certain allowances for what Mr. Rasmussen said, bearing in mind that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin is present at the meeting of NATO’s foreign ministers, and that these statements are geared first and foremost to bolstering his own morale and the moral of Ukraine’s other new officials. But the point is Rasmussen has been heard utter such Cold War-style statements about security threats from Russia to Ukraine and to NATO’s European members many a time.
A week ago, at a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London, he said again he saw Moscow’s hand at work in fuelling tensions in the east of Ukraine. He even dared accuse Russia of trying to influence ecological non-governmental organizations in a bid to upset plans for developing shale gas deposits in Europe, which even drew an ironic remark from a Greenpeace spokesman: “The idea ... is so preposterous that you have to wonder what they are smoking over at NATO headquarters.”