PRESS RELEASE

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Grushko: The Problem Is NATO Expansion

April 22, 2016 (EIRNS)—NATO expansion was the focal point of the NATO-Russia Council meeting on April, of which the recent U.S.-Russia military encounters in the Baltic Se are but functions.

"I will say without going deep into details that of course it was one of the main issues, as the military theme is the closest to the competences of the Russia-NATO Council and the aims it was set up for,"

Alexander Grushko, Russia’s Ambassador to NATO, told Rossiya 24 TV, yesterday. Grushko dismissed NATO countries’ demands for better mechanisms for regulating NATO-Russia military activities in close proximity to each other. "We said absolutely clearly that NATO is trying to ’put the cart before the horse,’" he said, adding that there’s no lack of such instruments.

"The problem is that from the mid-2000s, NATO started getting closer to our borders in military and military-infrastructural terms, exploring territories of new members, and after the Ukrainian crisis, or taking advantage of the Ukrainian crisis to be more exact, it moved to the policy of deterrence, which is expressed in concrete military construction measures,"

he went on.