MOSCOW, February 6. /TASS/. What NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in Ukraine’s parliament makes it appear that the alliance is preparing for military intervention in the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"What Rutte said when addressing Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, means that preparations for intervention are underway," he noted following talks with Ignazio Cassis, Swiss foreign minister and current Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) chairman-in-office, and OSCE Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioglu.
"He [Rutte] said that security guarantees included automatic actions by the so-called Coalition of the Willing – on its own at one stage and with US support at another – and that Britain and France were ready to deploy troops to Ukraine," Lavrov pointed out.
Rutte claimed earlier that the Coalition of the Willing’s troops would be deployed to Ukraine right after a peace agreement was made with Russia. Moscow strongly opposes the presence of troops from NATO countries in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that any move to provide security guarantees to Ukraine "through foreign military intervention on some part of Ukrainian soil" would be unacceptable for Russia.