MOSCOW, April 6. /TASS/. NATO is trying to make the world a more dangerous place and in doing so it is resisting the emergence of alternative centers of power and increasingly asserting its global role and the ambition to spread its influence beyond the Euro-Atlantic area, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, adding that "time is ripe for the alliance to retire."

In this way Zakharova commented on the meeting of the NATO foreign ministers held the day before to mark the alliance’s 74th anniversary.

"We hear the alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speculate ever more often about a global role of the alliance. Everything is being done to make the world even more dangerous, to prevent the existence of alternative centers of power capable of undermining the hegemony of the West. In general, one can state with certainty that security and NATO are incompatible. In this regard, there is only one conclusion that readily offers itself - at 74 years of age it is time for the North Atlantic bloc to retire," Zakharova said in a commentary the Foreign Ministry released on Thursday.

She believes that NATO is trying to "usurp the entire system of European security through Finland's accession."

"Finland has become another victim of the North Atlantic Alliance. The Finnish government decided to give up its longstanding neutrality in exchange for turning the country into a frontline zone, a bridgehead for deterring Russia in the Northwest. As we can see, NATO does not intend to stop there," she added.