Days after the US escalated, announcing it will be sending a Navy warship back into The Black Sea [5], and on the heels of NATO ordering its military planners to draft measures to beef up defenses amongst its Eastern European members, Russia is demanding answers for this escalation. As Reuters reports, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any increase in NATO's permanent presence in eastern Europe would violate a 1997 treaty on NATO-Russian cooperation: "We have addressed questions to the north Atlantic military alliance. We are not only expecting answers, but answers that will be based fully on respect for the rules we agreed on." De-Escalation-Off.
As Reuters reports [6], NATO has ordered military planners to draft measures to reassure nervous Eastern European countries - which were under Moscow's domination until the 1989 end of the Cold War - but stopped short of calls by Poland to base more forces there.
Foreign ministers from the 28-nation, U.S.-led NATO met this week to discuss responses to Russia's Crimea takeover, including sending NATO soldiers and equipment to allies in eastern Europe, holding more exercises, ensuring NATO's rapid-reaction force could deploy more quickly, and reviewing NATO's military plans.
Military planners will come back with detailed proposals within weeks, a NATO official said.
The Russians are not amused...
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any increase in NATO's permanent presence in eastern Europe would violate a 1997 treaty on NATO-Russian cooperation.
"We have addressed questions to the north Atlantic military alliance. We are not only expecting answers, but answers that will be based fully on respect for the rules we agreed on," Lavrov told reporters at a briefing with his Kazakh counterpart.
...
"It is necessary to de-escalate rhetoric which overshoots the mark and crosses into the unreasonable," he said.