Russia will respond “militarily” to what it perceives as NATO’s encroachment on its western borders, a senior diplomat said Monday.
Deputy Foreign Ministry Sergei Ryabkov’s threat follows Moscow’s complaints over NATO weapons deployment in Eastern Europe and Western warnings of Russia’s imminent invasion of Ukraine.
“Our response will be military” if the Western military bloc does not guarantee an end to its eastward expansion, Ryabkov told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
“There will be confrontation,” he added, warning that Moscow would deploy weapons that were previously banned under the INF Treaty, which expired in 2019
“Currently, [these banned weapons] do not exist; we have a unilateral moratorium. We call on NATO and the United States to join this moratorium,” Ryabkov said, lamenting that “they just don’t respond to our proposals.”
“There’s basically no trust in NATO,” the senior diplomat told RIA Novosti. “Therefore, we’re no longer playing this kind of game and don’t believe NATO’s assurances.”
Elsewhere in Monday’s interview, Ryabkov derided the United States’ “inexplicable fixation” on the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“This isn’t so and cannot be,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a videoconference with U.S. President Joe Biden last week, where he did not say whether he planned to go on the attack but insisted that Russia has a right to defend its security.
Putin also demanded from Biden that the West guarantee in writing that Ukraine would not be a staging ground for NATO.
On Friday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry demanded that the U.S. formally close the door to NATO membership to the ex-Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia.
The Foreign Ministry also demanded that the Western military bloc guarantee the non-deployment of weapons threatening Russia’s security on its western borders.
(c) The Moscow Times
“There’s basically no trust in NATO,” the senior diplomat told RIA Novosti. “Therefore, we’re no longer playing this kind of game and don’t believe NATO’s assurances.”
What assurances Ryabkhov? Do you have the documents with any NATO signatures on them, that says NATO will not expand? There are quite a few documents with Russian signatures on them, requiring countries to respect the sovereignty of neighbouring countries.
Oh dear! The military dwarf again. Like a bank robber saying ‘Come up with the cash or i’ll shoot myself in the head!’
What will Moscow do? Start WWIII and lose?
More than likely their response would be to kidnap and torture more Ukrainians and Georgians.
I’m sure they have targetted all the schools and hospitals in Donbas.
Not if Ukraine is in Nato. Sadly not Germany, but the hair-sniffer in D.C. is the biggest obstacle now. He wants to throw Ukraine under the bus. Time we get back the Congress and Senate to launch some damage control.
I think you’re right. His immediate response over the weekend when asked about defending Ukraine was, “Would YOU send your son or daughter to Ukraine to fight the Russians?!”
As if there was nothing else that could be done, like joining NATO, sending real weapons or using real sanctions on his boss.
My answer would have been YES! We are the land of the free and our destiny is to protect the blessed from the evil. We will only lose if we stop fighting.
Absolutely, but we have a little yellow-tailed, myopic, stubborn and corrupt leader of the free in the White House.
So far. The mummy is losing support, even among Dems. He’s the worst non-starter ever!
Defensive alignments threaten no one. Putin, however, doesn’t like NATO because it would stand between him and the invigoration of Putin’s neo-Soviet Union. For that reason, Putin is acting irresponsibly and eating the seed corn of his people and his rule will leave Russia more impoverished than it was at the start of Peter The Great’s reign.