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NATO does not seek a confrontation with Russia, but cannot ignore its aggressive actions, Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow stated on Tuesday in a public conference in Bucharest.
He asserted that NATO's message is very clear: the Alliance is defensive. A new cold war would not be beneficial to anybody, but merely ignoring Russia's actions would be a betrayal of NATO's principles and would encourage Moscow to continue aggressions against its neighbours, setting future relations on an unstable basis; security in the 21st century cannot relay on spheres of influence where great powers dictate the choices of their neighbours and change borders by force, he said. In his opinion, the best response to Russia's attitude is a combination of force and dialogue; thus, NATO will consolidate its defence and deterrence capability, so that Russia - or any potential enemy - never even considers attacking a NATO member.
Relations with Russia improved after the Cold War, until 2013, he recalled; the two sides cooperated in stabilizing the Western Balkans and Afghanistan, in the fight against piracy and terrorism. NATO's ambitions of a mutually beneficial partnership vanished, however, when Russia launched its aggression against Ukraine, illegally annexed Crimea and fostering separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine's Donbass region. The Kremlin thus breached international rules; it used propaganda, subversion and cyber attacks to destabilize Ukraine and undermine its security - and also to test NATO, according to Vershbow.
