As leaders from the 28-member NATO alliance gather in Poland, Russian state media has pounced on comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel that security in Europe can only be ensured by keeping Moscow on-side.
The military alliance’s posture toward Russia since its annexation of Crimea in 2014 has been increasingly aggressive. Moscow’s actions toward NATO countries are a key topic at the two-day Warsaw summit, which began Friday. Thus far, NATO has responded by beefing up its quick-reaction forces and will soon deploy a multinational battalion of troops in the Baltics and Poland.
“NATO is a structure from the Cold War, it is a leftover, and it cannot produce anything other than a cold war,” RIA, a state-run news agency, wrote in an editorial Thursday, quoting Dmitry Zhuravlev, the general director of the Institute of Regional Problems.
“[NATO] is like the teacher in a kindergarten, and Russia is their ‘bad child’ who needs to be taught a lesson,” Zhuravlev added.
Merkel told the lower house of the German parliament on Thursday that “trust had been lost” with Moscow due to its lack of respect for “the validity of the law and the inviolability of borders,” but said that long-lasting security in Europe could only be ensured through cooperation Russia.