https://www.rt.com/information/611623-baltic-sea-nato-grushko/Baltic Sea gained’t develop into NATO’s ‘inside lake’ – Russian deputy FM

In mid-January, NATO introduced the launch of its Baltic Sentry mission, saying it’s aimed toward patrolling the Baltic after key underwater cables had been broken within the space final 12 months.

Based on Grushko, the US-led army bloc’s “dream” of turning the Baltic Sea into its “inside lake” is not going to come to fruition, as a result of “Russia is not going to permit this,” he advised Russia 24 TV on Friday.

“We are going to do every little thing essential to ensure that our pursuits… within the Baltic Sea area are reliably protected,” the diplomat stated, clarifying that he was speaking concerning the army dimension.

As for particular countermeasures by Russia, they are going to be decided primarily based on the actions of NATO and its particular person members within the area, he acknowledged.

Grushko expressed doubt that the roughly ten vessels allotted by NATO for patrolling the ocean as a part of the Baltic Sentry mission will have the ability to take the realm below management. Nonetheless, he urged {that a} shut eye be stored on the “rhetoric of our rivals” concerning their actions within the area.

Moscow desires “the Baltic Sea to be a sea of cooperation, a sea of interplay, a sea by means of which commerce is carried out through delivery routes that had been operating for hundreds of years,” the deputy overseas minister pressured.

Final 12 months, Nikolay Patrushev, the previous head of the Russian Safety Council who at the moment serves as an aide to President Vladimir Putin, warned that “the West is looking for to deprive Russia of entry to the Baltic Sea.” Based on Patrushev, NATO’s latest members – Sweden and Finland – are being utilized in an try to show it into “the bloc’s ‘inside sea.’”