DISINFO: NATO troops encircle the borders of the Russian Federation
SUMMARY
The Pentagon is increasingly and recklessly “holding back” Russia at the Russian borders. In the airspace over the Baltic and Black Seas, American scouts are simply put under the risk of fire. These are frank and irresponsible provocations with a view to transforming a conceptual conflict into an armed one. // It is NATO troops encircling the borders of the Russian Federation and not vice versa. Russia is forced to react – to build up the strike and defensive assets on the ground, at sea, in the air.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about NATO allegedly pursuing a belligerent and hostile agenda against Russia, about the "Russian threat" as a false idea created and spread by NATO. An attempt to justify the increase in heavy weapons due to the allegedly aggressive NATO policies. NATO is a defensive alliance, whose purpose is to protect its member states. During the Warsaw summit in July 2016, NATO has made it clear that "The Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia". The claim that NATO is encircling Russia is one of the myths about NATO. Russia's land border is just over 20,000 kilometres long. Of that, less than one-sixteenth (1,215 kilometres), is shared with NATO members. Russia has land borders with 14 countries. Only five of them are NATO members. Outside NATO territory, the Alliance only has a military presence in two places: Kosovo and Afghanistan. Both operations are carried out with a United Nations mandate, endorsed by the UN Security Council, of which Russia is a member. In contrast, Russia has military bases or soldiers in three of the EU's Eastern neighbourhood countries, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, without the consent of their governments. See other examples of disinformation about NATO in our database, such as its never-ending provocations, its attempts to block Moscow in its sphere of influence, the Alliance's permanent targeting of Russia and Belarus, its role as a US subjugation tool for other countries and its unreliability to defend its members or its plans to continue attacking other countries, that the EU is encircling Russia and creating additional conflict zones, while NATO exploits non-existent “Russian threat” to increase its presence close to Russian borders and that the US creates and spreads a false image about an “aggressive” Russia constituting a security “threat”. The disinformation message appeared in the same article as the claims that "There is a plan of the capture of the Kaliningrad by Poland and the US".