As NATO turned 75 on April 4, 2024 Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to the Folks’s Republic of Bangladesh Alexander Mantytskiy accorded an unique interview to Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, Editor, Blitz.
Query: NATO turned 75 on April 4, 2024. This group performed a key function in bloc confrontation throughout the Chilly Warfare. After the top of the Chilly Warfare, it has lengthy sought new challenges. The Alliance was engaged in “peacekeeping” within the Balkans, “preventing terrorism” in Afghanistan. The forces of the worldwide coalition, nearly all of which have been NATO members, carried out a “humanitarian” intervention in Libya. How does this slot in with West’s assertion that NATO is a purely defensive alliance?
Alexander Mantytskiy: This oft-used assertion by the NATO management is refuted, for one factor, as you accurately level out, by the involvement of the alliance and its member states within the aggression in opposition to Yugoslavia in 1999 and Libya in 2011. Actually, the complete historical past of NATO is a historical past of armed conflicts.
NATO’s Strategic Idea, adopted on the Madrid Summit in June 2022, known as Russia “probably the most vital and direct risk to Allies’ safety and to peace and stability within the Euro-Atlantic space”. NATO is countering our nation offensively throughout all geographic areas and in all operational domains – land, sea, air, house and our on-line world.
The North Atlantic Alliance, with its confrontational rhetoric, unjustified build-up of army forces and infrastructure on its “Jap and Northern flanks”, and aggressive militarization of Europe, leaves little doubt that its duties are a lot broader than the mere “collective protection” of its allies. The primary aim of the collective West, led by america, is to keep up world superiority by drive, regardless of the irreversible and goal development of multipolarity.
Query: Is there any fact within the NATO management’s claims that the measures taken by the alliance international locations on the “Jap flank” are attributable to the occasions in Ukraine and Crimea in 2014?
Alexander Mantytskiy: The Western course on breaking the worldwide authorized order and dismantling the system of checks and balances within the space of world and regional safety had been taken lengthy earlier than the early indicators of the interior Ukrainian disaster. I’m referring to quite a few violations of worldwide legislation, few waves of NATO development in direction of Russia’s borders, enlargement of army infrastructure on the territory of recent members, new types of army actions, the creation of the European section of the US world missile protection system, and the participation of non-nuclear-weapon states in workout routines within the format of NATO’s “joint nuclear missions”.
The North Atlantic bloc started hyping up the perceived Russian risk to consolidate the alliance unity earlier than the 2014 occasions in Ukraine. On the request of the bloc’s Jap European members, the weather of collective protection in opposition to an “assault from the East” have been included in army coaching eventualities in 2013. The picture of Russia as an enemy was being molded at an accelerated tempo.
The NATO member-states didn’t assist any of Russia’s initiatives aimed toward creating a typical and indivisible safety house in Europe and decreasing the function of the facility issue. The Alliance refused to ratify the adopted Treaty on Typical Armed Forces in Europe and to supply ensures that the missile protection system is not going to be directed in opposition to Russian strategic nuclear forces. By the best way, america denounced the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty nicely earlier than the Ukrainian disaster and the Georgian aggression in opposition to South Ossetia in August 2008.
The disaster in Ukraine and anti-Russian “scare tales” are used solely as justification for the harmful course of militarizing Europe on the expense of European taxpayers.
Query: Mr. Ambassador, how would you touch upon Finland and Sweden becoming a member of NATO?
Alexander Mantytskiy: NATO has lengthy sought to get Stockholm and Helsinki into its ranks. Over the previous many years, each international locations have carefully interacted with the alliance by taking part in workout routines and working within the bloc’s numerous buildings. The “Russian risk” has been used as a pretext to strain Finland and Sweden to affix NATO. The pace with which Helsinki and Stockholm made the choice to affix the North Atlantic Group, means that it was necessary for the native officialdom to take action with out broad public dialogue, in order that the folks of those international locations wouldn’t ask pointless questions.
The most recent part of enlargement has on no account elevated the safety of those international locations and extra broadly of the Northern Europe. Sadly, NATO has turned this beforehand peaceable area right into a staging space for geopolitical confrontation. This isn’t Russia’s fault, however a strategic miscalculation accomplished by Brussels, Stockholm and Helsinki.
Query: To conclude, Excellency, how may you reply to those that contemplate NATO as probably the most profitable group within the historical past of mankind?
Alexander Mantytskiy: All NATO successes come all the way down to quite a few civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure on account of Alliance operations and missions. Its “achievements” additionally embrace the destruction of state foundations and economies of the international locations that fell the victims of the Bloc’s aggressive actions. Deeply engaged into army adventurism, america and its allies have dealt a heavy blow to the elemental ideas of worldwide legislation, which they’re making an attempt to exchange with a so-called order based mostly on the principles invented by the collective West.
Take a look at the twenty-year-long NATO marketing campaign in Afghanistan, which ended within the shameful pull-out of the coalition forces. The NATO army left that nation in ruins. The particular investigative fee of the German Bundestag said that “the mission in Afghanistan resulted in strategic defeat” and was “the most expensive and sacrificial” operation of Western international locations in fashionable instances.
It was the lack to discover a extra worthy use for the alliance after the top of the Chilly Warfare and the failure of the “period of main operations” that led Western international locations to the choice to return the North Atlantic bloc “to its roots” – consolidation round confronting an imaginary frequent risk from Russia.
Nonetheless, even NATO’s “achievements” on this sphere, specifically militarization of Europe, escalation of tensions, complicity within the collapse of the foundations of strategic stability, don’t contribute in any strategy to the success of the primary activity of any army affiliation – to make sure the safety of the inhabitants of its member international locations.
