MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/. NATO's eastward expansion has effectively ended and will not resume, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told TASS.

"I believe NATO's eastward expansion has stopped <…> and it will not resume. You know, not even Russia is talking about retrograde, meaning that I think the Russian government understands the reality that so long as NATO exists, it will exist in its current configuration. What the Russians speak of, however, is to begin to remove military resources that had expanded eastward with NATO," Ritter stated.

The expert recalled the conditions under which the first Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, negotiated German reunification - not an inch to the east. "NATO was not to expand. Even when Germany unified, no forces were supposed to go into East Germany. And yet NATO has expanded and now we have American troops in Poland. We have American anti-missile defense systems in Poland and in Romania. I believe that the Russians have stated that it would be best if these resources withdrew back to 1997 lines," Ritter went on to say.

He noted that these countries could be part of NATO and have their own militaries. "They are protected under [the NATO Treaty’s] Article 5. But there's no need for NATO to project military power forward because that poses a direct threat to Russia's national security. If there's going to be peace and stability in Europe, the national security interests of all parties have to be respected. And so I think NATO's expansion has stopped and we'll see what the future of NATO is," Ritter concluded.