MOSCOW, July 21. /TASS/. Russia will take measures commensurate with the threat created by NATO’s beefed-up military potential near the borders of the Union State, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told journalists on Friday.
Commenting on what came out of the recent NATO summit, he noted that Moscow will ensure its security by military means.
"The measures will be taken in proportion to the threat created by the continued bolstering of military potential and infrastructure of NATO countries and the alliance in general near our borders, near the borders of the Union State in Belarus. <...> We need to ensure our security by all means aided by military and military-technical means which we will continue in the future," he said, following an annual meeting of the friends of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund.
"We are not going, as they say, overboard in terms of reacting militarily to these threats. This is always strictly calculated depending on what is being presented to us as attempts to increase pressure, attempts to escalate the threat," the diplomat stressed.
He added that Russia’s recent withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) demonstrates that due to the threat from the West, Russia can no longer adhere to restrictions therein. "[The withdrawal from the CFE Treaty] shows that we can no longer adhere to even those nominal restrictions that had been enshrined in this treaty from the point of view of our freedom to ensure our own security in the realm of conventional arms where and how we needed. We will proceed precisely from this, reacting to what is going on in Poland, in Baltic countries, anywhere else," Ryabkov said.
The diplomat noted that Moscow continues to analyze the results of the NATO summit held in Vilnius. "Questions as to how the countries of this alliance interpret their decisions in relation to the 1997 Russia-NATO founding act, in my opinion, remain unanswered for a reason, they boil down to the fact that any agreements with Russia have been deemed null and void, well, that’s the way our neighbors are and one should not expect anything good from them," Ryabkov concluded.