MOSCOW - Russia will give an adequate response to possible threats from NATO in the Black Sea, Russian Permanent Representative to the alliance Alexander Grushko said.
“As of now, NATO seeks to move the confrontational schemes into the Black Sea basin,” he said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.
Commenting on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent statements that the turning of the Black Sea into “a Russian lake” cannot be allowed, the diplomat said that “NATO understands perfectly well that the Black Sea will never turn into ‘a NATO lake’.”
“We are taking all the necessary measures to neutralize possible threats and attempts of a forcible pressure on Russia from the southern direction,” Grushko said.
“The tendency towards the deterioration of relations between Russia and NATO” is not exhausted as yet, the Russian permanent representative said.
The alliance continues a policy to “deter” Russia, despite its calls to the political dialogue, Grushko said. “I do not want to say that we have ‘a Cold War’ in the relations with NATO, but the alliance is shifting to the schemes of ensuring security of the ‘Cold War’ times,” he said.
“This causes the concerns, because presently this is not only politics, but also military construction,” Grushko said.
“The politics is taking a concrete shape in ‘hardware’, and those numerous measures, which the United States and its allies in Europe are implementing today, stipulate this confrontational model. And this model will subsequently affect further policy,” the diplomat said.
