MOSCOW, June 18 (RIA Novosti) – NATO’s continuing expansion policy that ignores equal and indivisible security will lead to the emergence of new divisional lines in Europe, Russia’s envoy to the alliance, Alexander Grushko said Wednesday.
The Russian diplomat said that stability and security in the Euro-Atlantic region could be secured by providing equal and indivisible security and by refusing to strengthen one’s security for the sake of the security of others.
“NATO’s continuation of its expansion policy that ignores these fundamental principles will lead to the appearance of new divisional lines in Europe and not to the formation of an overall space of security,” Grushko said in a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry’s official website after the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) session on June 17 in Brussels.
The session was devoted to the 20th anniversary of the Partnership for Peace program, which was celebrated amid Kiev’s punitive operation against its own people.
At the session, Russia sought to attract NATO’s attention to the actions of Ukraine’s security forces and the use of military hardware, including BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher systems, and large numbers of deaths among the civilian population as well as the humanitarian catastrophe in the country’s southeast.
“Instead of condemning the lawlessness [in Ukraine], displayed, among other things, during the disgusting events near the Russian Embassy in Kiev, NATO is laboriously trying to find the “Russian trace“ in the events in Ukraine and makes conclusions that are based on suppositions rather than facts,” Grushko said.
Unconfirmed reports are swirling that Russian servicemen and weapons, including tanks, have entered the Ukrainian territory, while facts of violations by Ukrainian troops of Russia’s border regime have been silenced, he said.
Russia has called on the EAPC to put pressure on Kiev to immediately stop the punitive operation in the southeast and start fulfilling the Geneva deal and the OSCE road map, particularly in working out agreements on halting violence and creating conditions to start a genuine all-Ukrainian dialogue involving all the political forces and Ukraine’s regions.
Since mid-April Ukraine’s southeast has been gripped by violent protests between independence supporters refusing to recognize the new authorities in Kiev and government soldiers conducting a military operation in the region.
Throughout the conflict, there have been reports of Ukrainian border violations, in which Ukrainian military vehicles have attempted to penetrate Russian territory. Moscow has already directed a note of protest to Kiev in light of the most recent provocations, saying they do little to facilitate a peaceful settlement to the conflict.
Ukraine in turn accuses Russia of supplying independence supporters in the restive eastern regions with arms across the Russian-Ukrainian border. The country’s President Petro Poroshenko said government forces must secure control over Ukraine’s border with Russia before any agreement with the pro-independence eastern regions can be reached.
