An initiative to ensure that NATO forces can respond quickly to any Russian offensive in Eastern Europe is a cause for “grave concern,” according to Moscow’s top diplomat.
“We cannot ignore processes that cause grave concern, but we will respond in such a way as not to create any unnecessary risks,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview published Monday.
That complaint was prompted by a question from a journalist about whether the world is “witnessing the birth of a new Cold War.” Lavrov responded with a jab about how “the Americans made themselves at home in Germany” and with complaints about U.S.-led military exercises and European negotiations to eliminate barriers that might slow NATO deployments in a crisis.
“They have invented the term ‘military Schengen’ in the context of NATO-EU military cooperation,” Lavrov said. “It provides for the modernization of all transport arteries all the way to the alliance’s eastern border in such a way that the largest military equipment would be able to move eastwards unhindered. I believe that this alone is enough to understand the danger of these games.”
Lavrov and other Russian officials often complain that NATO is encroaching on Russia’s border, although Moscow adopted a mocking tone when European officials were troubled by joint Russian-Chinese military exercises in the Baltic Sea.
“Those who provoke such absolutely unwarranted exercises want to see retaliatory measures that would aggravate tensions still further,” Lavrov said.
NATO officials maintain that the security bloc is a defensive alliance. A report from leading Russian defense analysts concluded in a 2018 report that “NATO’s role in Western attempts to deter Russia remains primarily auxiliary, symbolic, and distractive rather than substantive and central.”
Western officials have been trying to change that in recent years, as Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its attack on eastern Ukraine has contributed to European fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin will try to seize other former Soviet vassal states. The “military Schengen,” a term derived from the Schengen Area of the European Union that allowed EU citizens to move freely within the union, is inspired in part by a confidential NATO report that the alliance would struggle to “rapidly reinforce” a Baltic or central European nation.
“The forces are in their home countries, but, then, they can move quickly, if needed,” NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said at the unveiling of the Readiness Initiative in 2018. “So, the focus of NATO now is on how can we reinforce any part of the alliance, if needed, in the east or the south or the west or north or wherever it’s needed?”
Lavrov downplayed Russia’s military power. “Russia is not a dominant military force in Europe,” he said. “NATO has this status.”
