BRUSSELS, November 10. /TASS/. NATO’s new military command structures are being created under the Cold War-era blueprints, Russia’s NATO envoy, Alexander Grushko, told Russian reporters on Thursday.

The Russian diplomat commented on the results of the NATO defense ministers meeting, during which the participants resolved to set up an Atlantic maritime security command and a logistics command to help respond more quickly to threats in Europe.

"It is evident now that, by making such decisions, NATO members were apparently inspired by Cold War-era strategies," Grushko said adding that the North Atlantic command was "a copy of the structure that existed until 2002 and was responsible for the deployment of US forces from the United States to Europe, ensured defense and protection of existing naval communications, engaged in organizing anti-submarine warfare and in general with the whole array of issues related to ensuring timely and safe reinforcements of this kind."

"As far as the second command is concerned, tasked with the movement of forces dircetly on the European territory, this issue has also been discussed at various angles by NATO. Many discussions were devoted to the need to establish the so-called "military Schengen," allowing to create legislative grounds and logistics infrastructure enabling the movements of not only personnel, but also of weapons, equipment and support elements to ensure operability of NATO deployments in all directions," he said.

"As far as the military consequences of those steps are concerned, we will have to wait and see how those decisions will be formally sealed during the next defense ministers’ meeting in February next year," Grushko added.

 The confrontation with Russia is the main driving force behind all NATO’s efforts to adjust and transform its military potential, the diplomat said. 

"Although measures to adjust NATO’s military potential are explained by the need to repel threats in all directions, it is evident that the task of confrontation with Russia lies at the core of those efforts," he told reporters.

"The results of today’s meeting are of no surprise to anyone, because they are a development of the Warsaw summit decisions, which, among other things, envisaged the review of the alliance’s command structures in order to determine the adjustments required to respond to new security conditions," Grushko said.

He said that on Thursday NATO, in fact, announced that three new elements will be integrated into its military structure.

"Those are the two new command structures, the North Atlantic and the European. In addition, the cyber component, the element of cyber security and the warfare in cyber space, will be integrated into the entire NATO command structure and operations. This is nothing new, too, because, approximately two years ago, NATO announced that cyberspace will also become the alliance’s operative environment, along with the aerial, naval and land ones, and will fall under the provisions of the Washington treaty, including the Article 5 [about the collective defense - TASS]," Grushko said.