Polish servicemen raise the NATO flag. Archival photoMOSCOW, May 4. The NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 will not deter the bloc from expanding its military presence in eastern Europe, according to a statement by the head of the Alliance's Military Committee, Robert Bauer, published by the Financial Times. is such that we are not killing the agreement, but it will not stop us from taking necessary actions on our part,» he said.
According to Bauer, the military buildup in Eastern Europe is aimed at strengthening NATO's defense. 1997 states, in particular, that Russia and NATO do not consider each other as adversaries and refuse to deploy significant military forces near each other's borders. At the end of 2021, Moscow published a draft treaty with the United States and its allies, in which, in in particular, she insisted on ending military cooperation between NATO and the post-Soviet countries, refusing to create bases on their territory, limiting the deployment of strike weapons near the Russian border, from Europe of American nuclear weapons and the non-expansion of NATO to the east. There was no constructive response to this. On February 24, Russia launched a special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine. As Vladimir Putin stressed, its goal is «to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years.» According to the Ministry of Defense, the Russian military strikes only on military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops, nothing threatens the civilian population. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the liberation of Donbass the main goal of the operation.