PRESS RELEASE

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Peskov, for Putin, Suggests Path to ‘a Kind of Détente’

Nov. 13, 2016 (EIRNS)—Military Times today reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in an interview with Associated Press, said that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump could start to build a trust relationship with Putin by urging NATO to stop expanding, and to withdraw troops deployed directly on the borders of Russia. "This would lead to a kind of déatente in Europe," Peskov said.

"NATO’s muscles [are] getting bigger and bigger and closer and closer to Russian borders," Peskov said.

Most of the NATO troops deployed to forward positions on Russia’s border have been so deployed only within the past 30 months. Only in July, NATO ordered deployment of thousands of additional U.S. and European troops to Poland and the Baltic countries to confront their neighbor Russia. Also, Peskov is speaking against the background of NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg’s Nov. 10 statement about needing to have 300,000 NATO troops on high alert against Russian "aggression."

German weekly Der Spiegel this week continued as Stoltenberg’s platform: It reports that

"strategists from Stoltenberg’s staff have drafted a secret report which includes a worst-case scenario in which Trump orders U.S. troops to withdraw from Europe."

This is not at all what Peskov is suggesting Trump might constructively do.