NATO Expansion is Aimed at Searching for Enemy — Russian Diplomat

"By moving their borders to our borders, they were just looking for an enemy, saying that we need to defend against a big threat from the east, we need weapons there, we need to increase military budgets, this is the meaning and purpose of NATO," Alexander Grushko said

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko Valery Sharifulin/TASS

© Valery Sharifulin/TASS

MOSCOW, March 2. /TASS/. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko on Wednesday said the real goal of NATO is to search for an enemy.

"Any person that can use its head understands perfectly well that NATO’s expansion was effectively aimed at searching for an enemy," he said on Rossiya-24. "NATO realized that they can’t exist without an enemy."

"By moving their borders to our borders, they were just looking for an enemy, saying that we need to defend against a big threat from the east, we need weapons there, we need to increase military budgets, this is the meaning and purpose of NATO," the diplomat went on to say.

"But at the same time, they created vulnerabilities for themselves," Grushko said. "Each expansion of the alliance actually worsened its security."

He said the West forgot about its own security interests in pursuit of geopolitical expansion into new areas.

"The West imagined itself the winner in the Cold War and decided that it alone could establish its own rules," the deputy foreign minister said. "A rule-based order is not really international law, of course. This is the order that is conceived in Brussels, Washington and other capitals".