“The Atlantic bloc does not hide that it is preparing for a possible armed confrontation with Russia, and has approved regional defense plans and formulated specific tasks for all the military commands of the alliance, which are working on possible war scenarios,” the deputy minister said.

According to the diplomat, NATO is “testing logistical routes for moving troops and weapons across the Atlantic to the eastern flank, where armament is also being stored and contingents of foreign forces are being deployed.”

The Steadfast Defender exercises, which took place from January 22nd to May 31st and were of an unprecedented scale since the Cold War, included Russia for the first time, instead of a fictitious state, as an adversary, Grushko recalled.

The deputy foreign minister denounced that NATO members “are inflating military budgets and militarizing the economy. In parallel with the rhetoric of confrontation, NATO is constantly raising the level of tension with Russia,” he added.

Grushko assumed that the security situation would be different if NATO did not want to drag as many countries as possible into its ranks at all costs.

If NATO had stopped at the Oder-Neisse line (between Germany and Poland), as promised to the leaders of the Soviet Union, the only line of contact between Russia and the bloc would be a 100-kilometer stretch of border near Kirkenes in Norway,” the deputy minister said.

The diplomat reaffirmed that it was NATO, and not Russia, that rejected dialogue and opted for confrontation. “It was the alliance’s deliberate policy that led to a large-scale European security crisis and the destruction of the instruments that guarantee it, he stressed. Attempts to use the language of force with Russia will not have any effect,” the deputy minister warned.

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