The Hindu : Russia warns NATO on expansion

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 26, 2004

International

International

Russia warns NATO on expansion

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, MARCH 25. Russia will revise its defence, including nuclear, strategy if NATO keeps its offensive military doctrine, said the Russian defence chief ahead of a new round of NATO expansion next week.

"If NATO is preserved as a military alliance with its current offensive military doctrine, Russia's military planning and principles of development of the Russian armed forces, including their nuclear component, will be revised accordingly," the Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, wrote in the latest issue of the journal "Russia in Global Politics."

The issue came off the press days before NATO admits new members, including, for the first time, three former Soviet republics. The three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, will formally join NATO on March 29, along with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Earlier this month, the Russian defence chief warned that Moscow could respond to the NATO enlargement by redeploying forces it had cut unilaterally in its north-western provinces under the former President, Boris Yeltsin.

Moscow protested against NATO's decision this week to deploy warplanes in the ex-Soviet Baltic region as infringing on Russia's security and warned of retaliation.

The First Deputy Chief of the Russian Army General Staff, General Yuri Baluyevsky, said today that defence posture may `harden' if NATO goes back on its promise not to deploy forces on the territory of its new East European members.

Russia has launched large-scale war games this week, involving the Black Sea fleet manoeuvres, a massive airdrop of troops and armour in the Moscow military district, and regional mobilisation training in the North Caucasus.

"The muscle-flexing is a demonstration of Russia's unhappiness with the NATO expansion which brings the alliance close to Russian borders," the Dreamy Novostei daily said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International