Secretary General: NATO must build up our forces in the East, but we can not allow a new cold war
According to Jens Stoltenberg, the only way to avoid an arms race and increasing tensions to continue to engage Russia in political dialogue.
WASHINGTON, April 13. /Offset. TASS Anton Cranks/. NATO should build up our forces on the Eastern flank, but cannot prevent a new cold war and arms race. This was stated on Wednesday by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the joint press conference with US President Donald trump at the White house.
“I firmly believe that the only way to contain Russia is to be strong. But the only way to avoid a new cold war, to avoid an arms race and to avoid tensions is to continue to engage Russia in political dialogue,” he said.
“We are placing more troops on the Eastern flank of the Alliance, improve the readiness of our forces and increase defense spending, said Stoltenberg. — We carry the largest reinforcement of collective defense since the end of the cold war.”
“We do not want a new cold war. We do not want a new arms race. We firmly believe that there is no contradiction between a strong Alliance, credible deterrence, defensive and political dialogue with Russia”, — reiterated the Secretary General of the Alliance. He repeatedly emphasized that NATO’s actions are “defensive in nature”.
Russia believes that NATO enlargement has led to increased tensions in Europe. This fact drew the attention of the Minister for foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov, speaking on 18 February at the Munich security conference. According to him, NATO expansion “has led to unprecedented over the last 30 years the level of tension in Europe” and, “judging by some of the speeches at the Munich conference, the cold war never ended”.
At a press conference in Hamburg on 9 December 2016 he said that gave members of NATO documents relating to held in his interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Eduard Shevardnadze and James Baker. They are all “clearly said that no NATO expansion to the East will not,” said Lavrov. According to him, “it’s all forgotten”, close to the borders of the Russian Federation “to deploy new units and heavy weapons” and the United States “for the first time deploy its heavy equipment in the Baltic States, that never happened”.