“The reason is perfectly understandable,” the senior Russian official told Qatar’s Al Jazeera television channel, stressing that “it is a question of the future.” He explained that it is not only about the weapons that will be placed in those countries upon joining to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to which, he pointed out, Moscow will have to respond, both in the Baltic Sea and in the face of the border problem.

“The fact is that we have no territorial problems with those countries, and in relation to Ukraine, the situation is different,” he noted.

Medvedev recalled that for his country, Crimea is an integral part of Russia, which the Ukrainian Government and others globally do not recognize.

He reflected that if Ukraine joins to a contending bloc of Moscow, also with nuclear potential, such a situation could incite the most reactionary sectors of that country to carry out any attack against Crimea, which will imply a direct conflict between the NATO and Russia.

The former Russian president recalled that the destructive position of the United States and the European member countries of the Atlantic Alliance prevented to resolve the situation in Ukraine through peace talks.

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