UNITED NATIONS, April 25. /TASS/. NATO wanted to break Russia apart but wound up bringing the country closer together instead, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

"Unbiased observers and political analysts both in Russia and abroad say that NATO wanted to tear Russia apart but wound up bringing it together instead," he said at a news conference after his visit to New York as part of Russia’s presidency in the UN Security Council.

"It is a nice line that Russia wanted to prevent NATO’s expansion. First, that’s not what we wanted; we thought that it was necessary to prevent it, as many promises were made here. But they were lying and now everyone knows that, as they were lying about the Minsk agreements and many other things," he said.