Russian Ambassador to the OSCE Gavrilov said that NATO is drawing neutral countries into the alliance
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NATO draws neutral countries into its orbit through military exercises. This worried the head of the Russian delegation at the talks in Vienna on military security and arms control, Konstantin Gavrilov, reports TASS.
“Recently, we have seen alarming trends in drawing neutral states into the orbit of the North Atlantic Alliance. Joint exercises remain one of the main forms of their cooperation. In the course of large-scale maneuvers, significant contingents of troops were redeployed to the Russian borders. We fix it,” the Russian ambassador said.
According to him, countries such as Sweden, Finland and Austria have already taken part in NATO exercises, which are outside the military bloc. “All the above trends point to the gradual integration of a number of neutral European countries into the military activities of the alliance, which objectively destabilizes the situation, in particular in the north of the continent,” Gavrilov noted.
Earlier, The Washington Post wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to scare NATO from interfering in the Russian-Ukrainian war, if one starts. The author of the article saw in Russia's military maneuvers on the border with Ukraine Putin's attempt to create a threat to the West. In his opinion, the Russian Armed Forces are demonstrating their military potential by conducting major exercises near their western borders.
