MOSCOW — NATO remains a serious threat to Russia's security, the secretary of the country's national security council said on Tuesday.
"We deeply doubt that we will be safer as a result of NATO enlargement. For us, the alliance represents a threat and a fairly serious one," Nikolai Patrushev said, according to Russian news agencies.
His comments came after NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen voiced surprise Saturday that Russia had named the western alliance as its "chief external military threat" in a key recent strategy document.
Russia has long resented moves by former Soviet neighbours such as Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO and relations between the alliance and Moscow plunged to a post-Cold War low after the Russian-Georgia war in August 2008.
Patrushev accused NATO members of fuelling the risk of a new conflict in the South Caucasus and rearming Georgia.
"We are watchful of the fact that Georgia is continuing to be rearmed. What for? Why? Do they want there to be a new aggression? If not, then they should not arm them. We don't plan to attack" Georgia, Patrushev said.
Meanwhile, the foreign ministry Tuesday sought to downplay Russia's characterization of NATO as an enemy, stressing that Moscow's new military doctrine saw NATO enlargement -- not the alliance itself -- as a security threat.
"The security risk to our country is not posed by NATO itself, but its... 'attempt to bring military infrastructure of NATO members closer to Russian borders, including by expanding the bloc'," a spokesman said in a statement posted on the ministry's website.
President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday approved Russia's new military doctrine, which listed first among the chief external threats the fact that NATO was attempting to "globalise its functions in contravention of international law."
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