PATRIOT PARK /Moscow region/, August 16. /TASS/. NATO is building up its potential in Eastern Europe and began to do it long before the conflict in Ukraine, ignoring Russia’s constructive signals, Secretary of Belarus’ Security Council Alexander Volfovich said on Tuesday.

"Many countries are even acting against their own interests, systematically ruining the existing architecture of global and regional security and are actually balancing of the brink of war, which, naturally, hampers the launch of a peace process," he said at the Moscow Conference on International Security.

According to Volfovich, NATO’s destructive role in these processes is obvious as the alliance has considerably increased presence at its eastern flanks. "And these processes began long before the launch of the special military operation in Ukraine," he stressed, adding that the alliance has deliberately turned down constructive proposals from Russia and its allies "about the indivisibility of spaces, security of the European continent, inadmissibility of building up military potentials in prejudice to other countries of the region, and unacceptability of the alliance’s expansion into the post-Soviet space."

"Along with that, the alliance continues to pursue the policy of open doors. Finland and Sweden motivated their decisions by the worsening security in the region and are getting prepared to joining NATO. Obviously, it is an ungrounded political decision," Volfovich said.

He noted that the situation in the world and in Europe is undergoing unprecedented changes and amid them Belarus is interested in lasting peace and security in Europe. That is why it keeps on advancing various initiatives, "including those geared to build a new architecture of regional security," he added.