ISTANBUL
Russia will take additional security measures against “hostile rhetoric” from NATO member states against Moscow, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
“The expansion of NATO, the advancement of NATO’s military infrastructure toward our borders, hostile rhetoric from member states of the North Atlantic Alliance – all this, of course, is a reason for deep concern and grounds for taking additional measures to ensure our security,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing in Moscow.
His remarks came days after French President Emmanuel Macron had suggested sending Western ground troops to Ukraine to support Ukrainians in defending their country against Russia.
However, other NATO countries, including the US, UK, and Germany, turned down Macron’s suggestion. “What was agreed with each other from the beginning also applies to the future, namely that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil that will be sent there by European states, or NATO states,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday.
Reacting to an earlier statement from Lithuanian Ambassador to Sweden Linas Linkevicius, Peskov said the Kaliningrad exclave is a Russian region and “it will always remain so.”
Linkevicius had said on X that Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave would be “neutralized” first should Moscow challenge NATO in the Baltic Sea.
Peskov also said that “various accusations and statements” are regularly coming from Kyiv toward Moscow, claiming that processes destabilizing the situation in Ukraine are “ripening from within.”
“We observe that, now in Ukraine, there are many points of view both on the elections and on the further legitimacy of the country’s leadership. Therefore, no help is needed there, the rocking processes themselves are ripening from within,” he said.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed that Russia is planning to conduct “information operations” against Kyiv to “destabilize” the country this spring.
