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Europe pushes aside the principle of indivisible security, and NATO’s expansion cannot but prompt Russia’s retaliatory measures, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
“Europe does not wish to heed our concerns and Europe pushes aside the invariable principle of indivisible security, which means that they talk about their security to the detriment of ours,” the Russian presidential spokesman said, commenting on a statement by Chief of NATO’s Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC) Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank on the need of creating “a military Schengen,” a free military passage area similar to the political Schengen zone, TASS reports.
“In this case, I want to stress again that it is NATO that is constantly moving its infrastructure close to our border. We are not moving towards NATO’s infrastructure. It is NATO that is moving towards us. This cannot but cause our concern and this cannot but prompt countermeasures to ensure our security,” the Kremlin press secretary stressed.
Responding to a specifying question about whether the Kremlin viewed such pronouncements as a risk of an armed conflict between Russia and Europe or as the alliance’s further confrontation with Russia, Peskov answered: “It is sooner the latter.”
“The alliance has always considered our country as a notional enemy. Now it considers our country as an obvious enemy. This is nothing else but an instigation of tension in Europe, which has its implications,” the Kremlin spokesman said.
NATO Logistics Chief Sollfrank said earlier that he would like to see a “military Schengen”, an area of the free passage of military cargo across Europe similar to the political Schengen zone that allows free movement in most of the EU.
“We are running out of time. What we don’t get done in peacetime won’t be ready in case of a crisis or a war,” the news agency Reuters quoted Sollfrank as saying.
“We need to be ahead of the curve. We have to prepare the theater well before Article 5 [of NATO’s founding Washington Treaty on collective defense] has been invoked”, he said.
