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MOSCOW, May 25. /TASS/. Russia will make all required steps to fend off risks and threats to the country’s national security, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet.
"We do not want to be like those irresponsible politicians who, in order to please their own ambitions, are ready to easily sacrifice the interests of maintaining peace and stability in Europe, and, without thinking of consequences, keep raising the stakes, feeding alarmist moods," he said.
"We do not intend to excessively dramatize the situation," Lavrov said while commenting on NATO’s increased presence in Central Europe.
"At that, we certainly can’t ignore the growing negative tendencies that form as a result of NATO’s course for deliberate disruption of the strategic balance of forces in Europe, including the strengthening of the North Atlantic alliance's military potential near the Russian borders, establishment of the European segment of the US global missile defense," he said.
"Such actions can’t be called other than destabilizing and short-sighted," Lavrov said.
"In this context, the Russian side will take all required steps to fend off the emerging risks and threats to our national security," the Russian foreign minister underscored.
Russia, Lavrov recalled, "is still committed to building the architecture of mutually beneficial and broad pan-European cooperation in the sphere of security on the basis of the principle of its indivisibility, resting upon international law."
"We hope commonsense finally prevails in NATO, and our Western partners find the strength to give up confrontational schemes conditioned by the desire to ensure their own security at the expense of others," he said.