Moscow blames NATO for trumping up "Russian threat"

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been desperately seeking to find a new geopolitical opponent in order to cement the alliance, and the Ukrainian situation was their perfect chance to move in that direction, a high-ranking Russian diplomat said Monday.

"No one threats the alliance from the East," Russian permanent envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko said in an interview published on the Foreign Ministry's website.

"The unprecedented campaign around 'Russian threat' has the only goal to persuade public opinion that NATO's return to containment of the threat from East, to collective security, is a move to the right direction," he said.

He described restoration of NATO's containment strategy "a highly dangerous trend" which destabilizes military situation and stirs up Cold War instincts.

"It will be difficult to come out of that spinning dive," he warned.

The diplomat also cautioned against beefing-up of the Western military presence in eastern European countries, as such step would "completely destroy the system of mutual obligations between Russia and NATO."

Last week, after the United States said it had sent jet- fighters to patrol the Baltic, deployed a dozen more to Poland and dispatched a destroyer to the Black Sea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded that the North-Atlantic alliance to explain how the bloc's recent military build-up corresponded with existing bilateral agreements.