A hype over the joint war game Zapad-2017 was intentionally fuelled, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov believes.
“The West tried to use the Belarusian-Russian military exercise as a cause for whipping up hysteria. Both Belarus and Russia had informed the countries participating in the Vienna Document of the OSCE. All messages had been sent, all observers had been invited – although these invitations were not necessary. Everyone interested attended the event and confirmed that everything had been transparent. And when this hysteria was being whipped, our American colleagues and NATO managed to deploy additional troops in the territory of the Baltic countries and Poland on the quiet,” the top Russian diplomad said in an interview to the Belarusian TV station CTV.
According to Lavrov, Europe is unhappy about the Kremlin’s determination to protest its own interests in the region which belongs to Russia and its allies ‘for historical reasons’.
“They repeatedly tried to throw all our neighbors into a dilemma – either you are with Russia or you are with the West. We have seen in Georgia and Ukraine what this [such policy] resulted in,” he said.
In the interview, he also praised a ‘big role’ of Belarus in countering ‘Russia-bashing’ at the recent Eastern Partnership summit.
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ІІ, belsat.eu
