US and NATO actions on the so-called "eastern front" produce the strongest impression that the United States and the alliance deliberately fan tensions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview, TASS reported.
"We are witnesses to a build-up of the military potential, growing military presence and NATO infrastructures on the so-called ‘eastern front’ of the alliance — unprecedented ever since the end of the Cold War — aimed at putting military and political pressures on our country," Lavrov said.
"Near Russian borders the member-countries of the alliance conduct combat exercises, which are quite often provocative. On the pretext of a mythical ‘threat from the East’ US troops and heavy armaments are deployed in Central and East European countries and new elements of the alliance’s command and staff infrastructures emerge," Lavrov said.
"All these actions by the alliance received ‘approval’ at last July’s NATO summit in Warsaw, which in fact reaffirmed a long-term policy of building up the alliance’s military component," Lavrov said. "One has a strong impression the United States and NATO intentionally fan tensions."
Lavrov said "these steps are part of the North Atlantic Alliance’s years-long destructive policy aimed at achieving military and political domineering in European and world affairs and containing Russia." "Even in ‘better days’ NATO never stopped advancing its military infrastructure towards Russian borders, including by means of the ‘three waves of expansion’, maintained intensive activity in the East European region, and plugged itself into US missile defense programs. The real aims of these programs had aroused no special doubts even before the settlement over the Iranian nuclear program," Lavrov said.
"Not to mention the attempts made by the alliance and some of its members to attain their own selfish geopolitical aims in defiance of the norms and principles of international law," Lavrov said. "Suffice it to recall the bombings of former Yugoslavia, the invasion of Iraq and the aggression against Libya.