MOSCOW, January 16./TASS/. Washington is practically initiating a new arms race in Europe, plans to deploy large-scale armed forces have destructive potentials, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.

"Plans of large-scale deployment of armed forces in Europe implemented by the US have strongest destructive potentials for the whole architecture of European security, create a new military-political reality, introduce sizable imbalance in the balance of power on the continent and are fraught with long-term destructive consequences on the Euro-Atlantic space," a commentary said.

"Washington, in fact, is initiating a new arms race, trying to impose on us a confrontational model of relations, similar to that of the Cold War times," the commentary added.

"Over the recent time, western media and bloggers have been actively spreading the thesis that the deployment of American troops in Europe allegedly plays no special military role and comes down to redeployment of several hundred US military on a rotation basis with a small number of arms and hardware with the framework of allied solidarity," the diplomat said. "However, looking at certain planned and implemented by Americans military preparations in Europe, the figures suggest a different thing," the commentary said.

In particular, in January 2017, the US has deployed to Poland an armored brigade of about 4,000 military and 2,500 units of military hardware. A total of 300 US marines will be deployed on the Norwegian base in Vernes from January.

In February, the Pentagon plans to deploy at Norwegian arms depot outposts sizable amounts of military hardware, Zakharova noted. A US air brigade of about 1,800 military with combat and transport helicopters is to be deployed in Germany at the end of March.

The ministry spokeswoman has noted that Americans are actively investing in the development of military infrastructure and potentials of rapid deployment of major military units close to the Russian borders, including updating of the network of airfields where US large transport airplanes could land.

"An arms depot outpost of the US Army was re-commissioned in the Netherlands in December 2016, to house a brigade set of heavy armor," the commentary said.

"A similar in its size facility will be shortly created in Belgium and two more in Germany. The hardware deployed there is designed for a prompt redeployment of US military personnel from the sites of their permanent stationing ‘in case of a need," she added.

The Pentagon slyly calls all its military deployments on the territories of European states rotating, in other words non-permanent, she said. "At the same time, these so-called continuous rotations are planned so that the units on duty will not be leaving sites of temporary stationing until they are rotated," she said.

"We are talking about a long-term stationing of American military equipment and personnel in Europe that can hardly be called solely defensive," she noted.

All this comes "against the background of unilateral and unrestricted development of potentials of US missile defense systems in Europe having an increasingly destabilizing influence on European and global security, as well as upgrading of US nuclear weapons deployed on the territory of other NATO countries," she added.