Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council of Russia, Konstantin Kosachev, said that the words of NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, that cooperation between Beijing and Moscow in the Arctic challenges the interests of the alliance are a direct threat to Russia.
Earlier, NATO Secretary General called the cooperation of Russia and China in the Arctic a challenge to the values and interests of the alliance. He recalled that not only Moscow, but also Beijing, continues to expand its presence in the region, declaring itself a “near-Arctic state”.
Kosachev responded to Stoltenberg’s statement in his Telegram-channel. He started from January of this year, “somewhere in the middle between NATO’s refusal to support Russia’s proposals for collective security and the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine,” when the NATO Secretary General continued to assert that NATO is a defensive alliance and does not pose any threat to Russia.
“Without a doubt, it represented and [still] represents. By and large, the Russian SVO [special military operation] is largely a desire to stop and compensate for military threats from NATO against Russia, in this case, coming from the territory of Ukraine,” the Russian official stated.
Speaking of the NATO chief’s recent statement, in which Stoltenberg claimed that “cooperation between Russia and China in the Arctic within the framework of a strategic partnership challenges the values and interests of NATO”, adding that “the accession of Sweden and Finland will strengthen the alliance’s position in the Far North,” Kosachev pointed to a direct threat to Russia emanating from such claims.
“Following the attempts to declare the Baltic Sea an internal sea of NATO, there comes a new step – towards the entire Arctic,” the Deputy Speaker warns.
Kosachev reminded that “this is not a zone of ‘NATO values and interests'”. He specified that the Arctic is nine constituent entities of the Russian Federation with 256 settlements, the Arctic shelf of Russia, the Northern Sea Route, and Russia’s cooperation on the Arctic with “any partners of our choice, especially after the NATO countries in the Arctic Council are trying to usurp its activities in their favor.”
Kosachev stressed that NATO, with it’s going beyond its geographical borders and beyond the powers defined even by its own Washington treaty, not to mention international law as a whole, “is the main threat to the established world order.”
He continued to say that if the alliance had been dissolved in the early 90s following the Warsaw Pact Organization, all people would be living in a completely different world now, “more stable, more peaceful, and more secure.”
“But the alliance exists because it helps the United States to keep its Western European allies in obedience after the Cold War and because it serves the phobias of Eastern European recruits, rebuilding them already in the new conditions that replaced the Cold War. The shift did not take place. NATO is still in the ranks and on an aggressive march,” he concluded.
Ru-Main, 25.08.2022
Source: Lenta.ru
