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On Tuesday, Russia declared NATO to be a “threat” to its security after the Western military alliance earlier announced plans to reinforce defenses in Eastern Europe due to Russia’s alleged involvement in Ukraine.
Russia’s surprise declaration came just ahead of a NATO summit to be held on Thursday in Wales, where Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is expected to lobby US President Barack Obama for military aid.
Mikhail Popov, Deputy Secretary of the Russian National Security Council, said that NATO’s plan for the new defense units was “evidence of the desire of U.S. and NATO leaders to continue their policy of aggravating tensions with Russia”.
“I have no doubt that the question of the approach of NATO members’ military infrastructure to our border” will be considered as “one of the foreign military threats to Russia” when its defense doctrine is updated later in the year, he said.
He also said that Russia’s 2010 military doctrine, which already allows for the use of nuclear weapons during grave national danger, will focus more on defeating NATO and its new anti-missile defense system in Europe.
On Tuesday, Ukraine reported losing 15 more soldiers during the latest clashes with Moscow-backed insurgents whose offensive threatens to stamp Russia’s permanent hold on the eastern half of the former Soviet state.
Poroshenko’s appeal for military assistance in the face of the alleged dispatch of Russian crack troops to the conflict zone was dismissed at an EU meeting in Brussels in the weekend.
However, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that the alliance will endorse the creation of a force of “several thousand troops” which could be deployed within “very few days” to meet the alleged Russian military movement in Eastern Europe.
At a meeting of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, Poroshenko said that “The situation is difficult but the Ukrainian fighting spirit is stronger than that of the occupants”.
Senior Ukrainian defense spokesman Andriy Lysenko added that “Russian armed forces are continuing to concentrate troops and military equipment in the towns and cities they had seized”.