NATO doesn\u2019t want a \u201cnew Cold War\u201d with Russia despite members\u2019 concerns about the Russian military buildup close to NATO\u2019s border, the alliance\u2019s secretary general said Monday.<\/p>\n
Jens Stoltenberg was speaking at the end of a four-day NATO parliamentary assembly in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are concerned by \u2026. (Russia\u2019s) lack of transparency when it comes to military exercises,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He mentioned a Russian-Belarus operation in September involving thousands of troops, tanks and aircraft held in Belarus, on NATO\u2019s eastern edge. The drills included maneuvers designed to hunt down and destroy armed spies.<\/p>\n
Still, Stoltenberg said: \u201cRussia is our neighbor \u2026 we don\u2019t want to isolate Russia. We don\u2019t want a new Cold War.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the 29-member alliance had increased jets patrols in the Black Sea in \u201cresponse to Russia\u2019s aggressive actions in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, Stoltenberg said the alliance was beefing up its presence in eastern and southeastern Europe to reassure allies in the face of Russia\u2019s actions in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are implementing the biggest reinforcement to our collective defense since the end of the Cold War,\u201d including four battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, he said.<\/p>\n
Separately, Romania is opening a multinational brigade in the southern city of Craiova, which the NATO secretary-general visited later Monday and where he met Romanian Defense Minister Mihai Fifor and Romanian armed forces head Gen. Nicolae Ciuca. Troops from 11 NATO members will help coordinate regional allied training and exercises, known as \u201cTailored Forward Presence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking about the alliance\u2019s mission in Afghanistan, where it retains more than 13,000 troops, Stoltenberg said \u201cthe cost of walking away would be much higher\u201d than the human and financial cost of the mission.<\/p>\n
Afghanistan would descend into chaos and become a safe haven for international terrorists should NATO pull out, he said.<\/p>\n
NATO says the Taliban have expanded their control of parts of the country after the alliance ended its combat mission in 2014. Some alliance troops have remained to train and advise Afghan forces under the NATO-led Resolute Support mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NATO doesn\u2019t want a \u201cnew Cold War\u201d with Russia despite members\u2019 concerns about the Russian military buildup close to NATO\u2019s border, the alliance\u2019s secretary general said Monday. Jens Stoltenberg was speaking at the end of a four-day NATO parliamentary assembly in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. \u201cWe are concerned by \u2026. (Russia\u2019s) lack of transparency when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7245,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7243\/revisions\/7245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}