Envoy Grushko: Russia to counteract NATO military activity near its borders

There are no objective reasons to deploy additional NATO forces near the Russian border, to build up the military contingent and to intensify exercises, Russian Permanent Representative to NATO Alexander Grushko told reporters in Brussels.

"Countermeasures have already been taken and will continue to be taken. They will be strictly measured and based on the analysis of NATO activity in this region," said the envoy answering questions about the Tuesday meeting of the NATO foreign ministers.

"In fact, the NATO logic is largely dictated by interests of NATO itself rather than regional security interests. Let me remind you that former Alliance Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said three years ago that the fate of NATO was being determined in Afghanistan. No one is making such statements now. It seems that back then the secretary general was advised against such statements. But even at that time NATO was concerned about suffering a major defeat in their adjustment of compatibility of forces in the case of the loss of Afghanistan as a giant NATO training range and a number of extensive exercises was added to NATO programs," Grushko said.

The exercises NATO will hold in 2015 will probably be the first drills engaging up to 40,000 troops since the end of the Cold War, the envoy continued. A number of alliance member countries will participate in the training on the territories of Portugal, Italy and Spain. These plans have already existed on paper.

"And what did not exist on paper was ideological reasoning behind the increased activity. As we can see now, NATO is actively using the Ukrainian crisis as the ideological reasoning for reanimating the alliance, proving its significance under new security circumstances and, most importantly, enhancing military activity and increasing defense budgets," the senior Russian diplomat said.

Notably, NATO which criticizes Russia for "the so-called increased military activity, first and foremost, flights of Russian aircraft above international waters of the Baltic Sea, uses the statistics of intercepts done by NATO planes," he remarked.

"This is totally reversed logic: no one forces NATO to intercept our planes. And if they do, this means that they are watching them on their radar screens. But practically all the defense ministers asked that question admitted that Russia performed the flights in strict compliance with international legal norms and that the routine flights did not threaten relevant states and could not be regarded as threatening or destabilizing [factors]," said the chief of the Russian diplomatic mission to NATO.