MOSCOW, February 16. /TASS/. NATO has been trying to embroil Russia in confrontation by constant provocative actions, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a board meeting of the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Putin pointed out that "NATO has declared restraining Russia its new official mission."

"For this purpose, the bloc has been expanding as it did before but now they seem to have found new serious reason to justify the bloc’s expansion and have sped up the process of deploying conventional and strategic weapons beyond the member states’ borders," the Russian president stressed. He went on to say that "they have been constantly provoking us in order to embroil us in confrontation." The Russian leader also pointed to "the ongoing attempts to interfere in our internal affairs and destabilize the social and political situation in Russia."

The Russian leader noted that at the NATO summit held in 2016 in Poland’s capital of Warsaw, "Russia was declared the main threat for the Alliance’s security for the first time since 1989."