torchthebitch
Soothing jacuzzi bath
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2006
- Posts
- 15,972
The danger of local armed conflicts along Russia's borders exploding into full-scale nuclear war has grown following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s chief of staff said on Thursday.
*General Nikolai Makarov told the Russian Public Chamber there is a dangerous level of mistrust with former Soviet states that border the country.
"The possibility of local armed conflicts virtually along the entire perimeter of the border has grown dramatically," Makarov said. “I cannot rule out that, in certain circumstances, local and regional armed conflicts could grow into a large-scale war, possibly even with nuclear weapons.”
Makarov mentioned NATO’s steady encroachment toward Russia’s borders as one of the key reasons for the heightened level of mistrust in the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
"Almost all countries formerly belonging to the Warsaw Pact have become NATO members, and the Baltic States that were earlier a part of the USSR have also joined the alliance,” Russia’s top military official said.
Moscow has often criticized the western military bloc for going back on its word not to expand following the collapse of the USSR.
"At time of the withdrawal from Eastern Europe, the NATO Secretary General promised the USSR it could be confident that NATO would not expand beyond its current boundaries," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a past comment. "So where is it now?” I asked them [the NATO officials]. They have nothing to say. They deceived us in the rudest way.”
In a press conference following the conclusion of the G-8 Summit in Deauville, France, President Dmitry Medvedev discussed Russia’s response to missile defense talks with the US.
On the critical subject of missile defense, which threatens to create a return to Cold-War conditions for the European continent, not to mention US-Russian relations, Medvedev expressed his dissatisfaction with the result of the talks.
"I am not satisfied with the American side's reaction to my proposals and with NATO's reaction in general,” the Russian leader told reporters on Friday at the resort town of Deauville. “Why? Because we are wasting time. Even though I spoke about the year 2020 yesterday as a deadline…which is the year when the construction of a four-stage system of the so-called adaptive approach ends."
"After 2020, if we do not come to terms, a real arms race will begin," Medvedev warned.
The Russian leader stressed that he has received no satisfactory guarantees that the missile defense shield is not being targeted at Russia.
“When we ask for the name of the countries that the shield is aimed at, we get silence,” he said. “When we ask if the country has missiles (that could be aimed at Europe), the answer is 'no.'”
“Now who has those type of missiles (that the missile defense system could work against)?”
“We do,” Medvedev explained. “So we can only think that this system is being aimed against us.”
Moscow has stated on many occasions in the past that without Russia's full participation in the missile defense project, an arms race could break out once again on the European continent.
The Russian president said that he would not look forward to living on such a continent that has reverted back to an arms race.
http://rt.com/