MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Tuesday said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has from the very start used the Russia-NATO Founding Act as a fig leaf to cover up its policies in the east.
He made the comments when speaking on Rossiya-24 television.
Ryabkov said NATO plans at its summit in Madrid in June to make decisions about additional deployment of forces on its eastern flank.
"There is a paradoxical, if not comical, incredible internal discussion within NATO about how this may or may not comply with the provisions of the Russia-NATO Founding Act," the diplomat said. "Someone is trying to convince that all this is in line with the provisions of the Founding Act, someone else says that the Russians violated it a long time ago, and therefore it can be ignored."
"What we are saying is that the West from the very start was setting up for neglecting that document," Ryabkov said. "This was originally a sort of a fig leaf that covered up the different content of NATO’s policies in the east, speaking in broad terms".