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A top Russian general blasts NATO's eastward expansion as a challenge to Moscow's national security in Moscow on November 15.
Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the General Staff, said the inclusion of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO has already "sharply changed the balance of forces on the continent, tipping it in favor of the broadened alliance," the Interfax news agency reported.
The zone of NATO's responsibility widened 650-750 kilometers to the east, thereby substantially curtailing the period of strategic warning for the Russian Federation, Kvashnin said.
He said that Russia is against "returning to the times of the Cold War" and has since cut its troops deployed in the western direction by 40 percent.
Moscow froze its ties with NATO when the transatlantic alliance started its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia last March against Russia's staunch opposition.
Kvashnin said further relations with NATO would depend "on NATO's sincere intentions to restore relations with Russia and its readiness to reckon with its views on European security and the forms of its achievement."
"We still think that there is no alternative to cooperation with NATO and hope for renewing our equal and constructive relations with it," he said. "But that should not only boil down to discussions and exchange of information in an illusion of all is well in the cause of European security."
Kvashnin said NATO's new strategic concept "provides for the expansion of the geography of the possible use of armed force far beyond the zone of its responsibility."
"Not only the growing military-political activity in the former Soviet Union but the evident attempts to declare these regions a sphere of NATO security interests are alarming," he said.
There was "growing readiness to use armed force in its direct, most crude form at different levels," Kvashnin warned.
"The examples of Kosovo and Iraq are only the first forerunners of such readiness. One may expect that other territories, including former Soviet territories, will not be an exception," Kvashnin said.
He said that NATO has undertaken energetic efforts to improve its arms systems to guarantee its military-technical superiority.
Kvashnin also criticized the Untied States for its attempts to revise key military agreements, efforts that harm Russia's national security interests.
"Attempts at revising key treaties and agreements in the sphere of the strategic offensive weapons and anti-missile defense directly contradict Russia's national interests and security," Kvashnin said.
"The latest events demonstrate that the United States has almost resolved the issue of deploying an anti-aircraft system banned by the ABM Treaty," he said.
He noted that US President Bill Clinton's signing of a pertinent law elevated this task "to the rank of US state policy."
Although the decision will officially be finalized in 2000, "there are no weighty grounds to expect the United States will give up the idea of establishing its national anti-aircraft system."
"In other words, we can say today that the deployment process has become irrevocable," he said.
Therefore, Russian "would have to take retaliating steps and raise the effectiveness of our strategic nuclear forces," he said.
He expressed the belief that "the process of further reducing strategic offensive weapons would be suspended or even halted."