PRESS RELEASE
Grushko: NATO Lives in Surrealistic Reality
June 7, 2016 (EIRNS)—Alexander Grushko, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, said in an interview on Rossiya 24 television yesterday, that the idea of a Russian threat to NATO is
"a myth which gives a possibility to pursue the policy that NATO pursues, and at the same time to solve other tasks of strategic nature."
Grushko said this myth is used as an external factor to substantiate that
"NATO is seen as an additional band to fix unity of the West... All these games of NATO’s fearfulness, they must end sooner or later, as it is difficult to live all the time in the smoke of an ideological campaign built on nothing."
Grushko was speaking as giant NATO exercises are underway in both the Baltic region and in Poland.
"What we are seeing today in the Baltic states, as a matter of fact, is nothing but attempts towards force development with the hostile policy pursued by NATO in the recent time. I would not say that it is a direct threat for Russia but, nevertheless, it obviously creates serious risks as we see an absolutely new military reality forming along our border,"
he said. He called statements out of Warsaw that Russia is preparing to invade Poland, absurd.
"Recently the [NATO] secretary general visited Poland, and during these visits the Polish side was making statements that now Russia knows that an attack against Poland is an attack against NATO, which is completely absurd, as they are discussing the problem that does not exist,"
he said. "There are no plans to attack Poland."
The problem is that NATO’s warnings of a non-existent Russian threat can materialize into actions. "The policy [of NATO] lives in surrealistic reality, and the most dangerous thing is that it now starts taking shape of military planning and military preparations carried out on territories along our borders,"
Grushko said. He said NATO’s decisions that are now materialized as exercises could soon acquire a more dangerous nature.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, during a joint press conference yesterday in Moscow with Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini, reiterated that Russia will take measures in response to the NATO military build-up.
"We do not hide our negative attitude to the movement of NATO’s military infrastructure towards our borders, to dragging new states into the military activity of the block,"
Lavrov said.
"Here we will invoke Russia’s sovereign right to ensure its security with measures adequate to the current risks. I am confident that our Finnish friends and neighbors also understand this."
