WASHINGTON, February 21. /TASS/. NATO does not see Russia as a threat to any of its members, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview published by the Foreign Policy magazine on Tuesday.

"We don’t see any threat [from Russia] against any NATO ally and therefore, I’m always careful speculating too much about hypothetical situations," he said when asked what the alliance would do "if Russia did in the Baltics what it did in Ukraine."

"What I can say is that anything like what happened in Crimea and Ukraine would, of course, trigger a response from the whole alliance, because NATO is there to defend and protect all allies against any threat," he went on.

According to Stoltenberg, NATO "deployed battlegroups for the first time to this part of Europe."

"The purpose of our presence is not to provoke a conflict, but it is to prevent a conflict," he said.