NATO and Russia are heading for a clash, Sputnik and Reuters’ Johanna Geron reported yesterday. Russia previously slammed NATO’s creeping expansion, saying that NATO should return to the positions that existed at the moment of signing of the 1997 Russia-NATO Founding Act. The Russian Foreign Ministry has emphasized that strengthening NATO’s military capability near Russia’s borders poses a national security threat.
On Sunday Jan. 16, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO would never pull allied troops from member states that had joined NATO since 1997, because “that is actually half of our members,” he told CBC news on Jan. 16, and “would mean having a second-class NATO of countries not protected by the alliance…. We will never introduce that.” he told CBC News. “But we’re ready to engage in balanced, verifiable measures to reduce arms, conventional, nukes and that kind of thing. That would be good for Russia and good for NATO.”
