Russia Responds to NATO Pressure

Dec. 1, 2021 (EIRNS)—Over the last 24 hours or so, Russia has been pushing back hard against NATO’s military buildup near Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin hit hard at NATO in response to a number of questions during the VTB Capital “Russia Calling!” investment forum yesterday. First of all he expressed concern about NATO exercises close to Russia’s borders. “The Russian Federation is concerned to an extent over major military exercises carried out near its borders, including in the Black Sea just recently, when strategic bombers were flying just 20 km away from our border, armed with precision weapons and potentially even nuclear weapons. All this poses a threat to us,” Putin was quoted as saying by TASS.

Putin also said that Russia was forced to develop hypersonic weapons in response to the West’s endangering of Russia’s security. He recalled that the ties between Russia and the West were “almost idyllic” in the 1990s. However, despite Moscow’s requests and warnings, NATO’s infrastructure expanded to the Russian borders, he pointed out.

“Now, the situation has come to a point that anti-ballistic missile defense systems are being deployed in Poland and Romania. And the MK-41 launchers stationed there can have Tomahawk strike systems mounted on them. This creates threats for us,” Putin emphasized. “In response, we had to commence work on developing hypersonic weapons. This is our response,”

the Russian President said. “It was not us who did it first. Our partners were the first to quit the ABM Treaty and then the INF Treaty,” he said.

Nikolay Patrushev, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, charged yesterday that the United States is creating a favorable information background for building up arms supplies to Ukraine by fanning tensions over a “Russian threat,” one that does not in fact exist.

“By fanning tensions over an alleged Russian threat the United States and its allies are creating a favorable information background for building up their military group, reconnaissance activity and supplies of advanced weapons, ammunition and other hardware to the Ukrainian military and to nationalist forces,” Patrushev said in an interview with the government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

“Although the American side has been urged to stop spreading disinformation in the mass media and in contacts with the European partners, no changes have followed. The purpose for which all this disinformation is being spread remains unclear for the time being, but possibly it is necessary for providing some arguments for the introduction of more sanctions against Russia,”

Patrushev said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that NATO’s presence in regions around the world in no way enhances their security because the alliance only augments regional confrontation and imposes its vision on the world order. The ministry statement called NATO’s belief that it strengthens regional security an “illusion,” citing the alliance’s campaigns in Yugoslavia, Libya and Afghanistan as examples.