Putin Commits Russia To Responding to NATO Moving Its Military Infrastructure into Finland and Sweden

May 17, 2022 (EIRNS)—In Moscow, where he was hosting a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) leaders on May 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the expansion of NATO infrastructure will force Russia to respond, and he addressed the question of Sweden and Finland joining NATO. “The expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance is a problem that, in my view, is being created in an absolutely artificial manner because it is being done in the foreign policy interests of the United States. Generally, NATO is being used, in effect, as the foreign policy tool of a single country, and it is being done persistently, adroitly, and very aggressively. All of this is aggravating the already complex international security situation,” Putin said, according to the Kremlin transcript, which included the public remarks of each of the six leaders and the general secretary.

Putin insisted that Russia has no problems with Sweden and Finland joining NATO because there is no direct threat with these countries joining the alliance. “But the expansion of its military infrastructure to these territories will certainly evoke a response on our part,” he said. “We will see what it will be like based on the threats that are created for us. But generally speaking, problems are being created from nothing. So, we will respond to it in a fitting manner.”

In his comments immediately preceding what he said about NATO, Putin highlighted that a priority task for the CSTO is defending the memory of victory in the Great Patriotic War and “to counteract any attempts to whitewash the Nazis, their accomplices and modern followers.”

“This is extremely important particularly now, when monuments to the heroes and liberators are being barbarously demolished in a number of European countries, laying flowers at memorials is forbidden, and cynical attempts are being made to rewrite history, while praising murderers and traitors and insulting their victims, thus crossing out the feats of those who selflessly fought for Victory and won the war,”

he said.

He went on that “Unfortunately,” in Ukraine,

“neo-Nazism has been on the rise for a long time now, to which some of our partners from the ‘collective West’ turn a blind eye, and thus actually encourage their activities,” Putin said. “All this goes hand-in-hand with an unprecedented surge in frenzied Russophobia in the so-called civilized and politically correct Western countries.

“Indeed, we hear, and I hear people say that extremists can be found anywhere, which is true. Extremists are everywhere and one way or another they are leaving their underground hideouts and make themselves known,”

he continued.

“Nowhere, though—I want to underscore this—nowhere are Nazis being glorified at the state level and not a single civilized country’s authorities are encouraging thousands of neo-Nazi torchlight processions with Nazi symbols. This is something that is not practiced anywhere. But unfortunately, this is happening in Ukraine.”

Although he didn’t mention it, unfortunately, in the United States, the government and media are blacking out the adherence of Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron’s adherence to exactly that same neo-Nazism.