Nato Harmful To Russia
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/30/world/europe/russia-ukraine-cadet-school/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
Why NATO is such a thorn in Russia's side
By Diana Magnay, CNN updated 10:36 AM EDT, Wed May 7, 2014
Moscow (CNN) -- In a telephone call Monday between Russia's Defense Minister General Sergei Shoigu and the U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel, Shoigu described the activity of U.S. and NATO troops near Russia's border as "unprecedented." According to the official Russian version of the call, his American counterpart assured him the alliance did not have "provocative or expansionist" intentions -- and that Russia should know this.
But it hardly seems to matter how often NATO makes these assurances. The Kremlin will never trust them. Fear of the Western military alliance's steady march east is deep-rooted. It strikes at the very heart of Russia's national sense of security, a relic of Cold War enmity which has seeped down to post-Soviet generations.
(NATO advances anger Russians)
Ilya Saraev is a 15-year-old pupil at the First Moscow cadet school in Moscow. He thinks long and hard when I ask him about NATO. "I think NATO might be a friend to Russia but there's one point I don't understand: Why it needs to approach the border with Russia more and more," he says.
"People still don't realize that war means despair and grief," says 16-year-old Vlad Voinakov. "They can't find a compromise because people's interests become involved and that's where the problem lies."
(NATO promised not to advance eastward)
Russia and NATO have never been able to find much of a compromise. Russia's repeated stance is that after German reunification, promises were made that NATO would never expand eastward -- and were promptly broken.
(NATO and Russia cannot cooperate)
NATO says that fundamentally Russia's anti-NATO rhetoric is an attempt to "divert attention away from its actions" in Ukraine. Now all cooperation is off the table.
"From the Russian side, that NATO-Russian cooperation
Why NATO is such a thorn in Russia's side
By Diana Magnay, CNN updated 10:36 AM EDT, Wed May 7, 2014
Moscow (CNN) -- In a telephone call Monday between Russia's Defense Minister General Sergei Shoigu and the U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel, Shoigu described the activity of U.S. and NATO troops near Russia's border as "unprecedented." According to the official Russian version of the call, his American counterpart assured him the alliance did not have "provocative or expansionist" intentions -- and that Russia should know this.
But it hardly seems to matter how often NATO makes these assurances. The Kremlin will never trust them. Fear of the Western military alliance's steady march east is deep-rooted. It strikes at the very heart of Russia's national sense of security, a relic of Cold War enmity which has seeped down to post-Soviet generations.
(NATO advances anger Russians)
Ilya Saraev is a 15-year-old pupil at the First Moscow cadet school in Moscow. He thinks long and hard when I ask him about NATO. "I think NATO might be a friend to Russia but there's one point I don't understand: Why it needs to approach the border with Russia more and more," he says.
"People still don't realize that war means despair and grief," says 16-year-old Vlad Voinakov. "They can't find a compromise because people's interests become involved and that's where the problem lies."
(NATO promised not to advance eastward)
Russia and NATO have never been able to find much of a compromise. Russia's repeated stance is that after German reunification, promises were made that NATO would never expand eastward -- and were promptly broken.
(NATO and Russia cannot cooperate)
NATO says that fundamentally Russia's anti-NATO rhetoric is an attempt to "divert attention away from its actions" in Ukraine. Now all cooperation is off the table.
"From the Russian side, that NATO-Russian cooperation