US State Department comments on the article of Russian Defence Minister in the New York Times

The USA does not think NATO threatens Russia, State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said at a briefing in Washington commenting on the article of Sergei Ivanov in The New York Times. In that article, the Russian defence minister stressed, in part, that the hasty enlargement of NATO threatens the progress of Russia-NATO dialogue.

The cold war is over. The USA and its NATO allies do not plan to encircle or threaten Russia, Mr Ereli said. On the contrary, we stand for cooperation and not competition and it was in this spirit that NATO expanded. The boundaries in which we are operating are apparently the boundaries of the post-cold war era, said the diplomat, adding that they do not view Russia as a threat.