NATO’s Plan to Defend Baltic Countries “Bewilders” Russia
Russian Foreign Ministry expressed “bewilderment” at the release of U.S. diplomatic cable that shows NATO’s contingency plan to defend the Baltic countries, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as Poland against any possible Russian attack on them.
Classified information shows nine NATO divisions, U.S., British, German and Polish, had been identified for combat in the event of an attack on one of these countries.
The information disclosed by WikiLeaks and detailed in The Guardian provoked a lot of concern, raised questions and bewilderment, a source in foreign ministry said.
The disclosure of this information comes after the NATO summit in Lisbon, where Russia was a star guest, the participants stressing out that NATO-Russia relations are highly intertwined, and that members of NATO Russia Council should refrain from any act of aggression and threat against each other.
Russia has repeatedly maintained the need for the NATO partners to express clearly that they will not engage in any plan to attack Russia.
Russian source added that the release comes as an even bigger surprise in the context of Russia’s efforts to reduce its military presence in the region, by cutting down the quatity of heavy weaponry in Kaliningrad.
Furthermore, Russian president has just completed a visit to Warsaw, where he tried to thaw the ties between the two countries, after the Russian Duma had acknowledged, as a sign of good faith, that the crime at Katyn in 1940 was committed by the Soviet Union.
After the visit to Warsaw Medvedev is expected today at the NATO headquarters in Brussels for an EU-NATO summit.
A Russian member of the parliament, Leonid Slutsky, asked for NATO to clarify its stance on this.
Dmitry Rogozin, Russian ambassador to NATO, was asked to establish if NATO really nurtured such plans. Rogozin urged NATO to abandon such plans, if any, for they could create a lot of public resonance in Russia.
A Russian security expert said he thought the cable containing this information was released especially to undermine Russia’s new relation with NATO.
