NATO headquarters building in BrusselsMOSCOW, Mar 16 Senior NATO officials claim that the alliance unsuccessfully tried to contact Russia after an air strike on a military training ground in the Lviv region, CNN reported. The Russian armed forces on Sunday morning with long-range precision weapons attacked the training centers of the Ukrainian armed forces in the village of Starychi and at the military training ground Yavorovskiy, destroying up to 180 mercenaries and a large consignment of foreign weapons, the RF Ministry of Defense reported.The Ministry of Defense said that there will be no mercy for mercenaries in UkraineAccording to CNN, the strike on an object near the Polish border raised NATO fears about the spread of the conflict to the territory of its member country. «Of course, we tried to establish contact with them. But communication requires two parties,» the TV channel quoted an unnamed NATO representative, who spoke to reporters at the headquarters of the alliance. According to the TV channel, NATO tried to contact the Russian side using a hotline on resolving conflicts and letters. The United States and Russia have a separate hotline, which has already been tested, but has not yet been used, the TV channel notes. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops. With the support of the Russian Armed Forces, the DNR and LNR groups are developing an offensive, but there is no talk of the occupation of Ukraine, the Russian president emphasized. the line under the global dominance of the West
