In These New Times

PressTV

30th August, 2010

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has blamed the West for resorting to deceitful political measures to thwart the resetting of Moscow-Washington ties.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, most NATO member states have been unfair in their dealings with Russia, and have constantly broken their commitments, Putin told Kommersant daily in a Monday interview.

“At time of the withdrawal from East Europe, the NATO secretary general promised the USSR it could be confident that NATO would not expand over its current boundaries,” said Putin, quoted by Ria Novosti.

“And where is it? I asked them NATO officials about this. They have nothing to say. They deceived us in the rudest way,” the premier stressed.

Putin also said that he is skeptical about Washington’s intentions in rebuilding ties with Moscow, and expressed unease about a controversial US missile defense system in Europe.

Putin says the ongoing talks between Washington and several European countries regarding the system, contradicts a previous pact reached with US President Barack Obama.

In September 2009, Obama scraped an original deal devised under former US president George W Bush.

Russia has been critical of the plan, arguing that the missile system would be a threat to its sovereignty and that it meant to pacify its ballistic capability.

But this year the US began talks with Bulgaria and Romania — as potential hosts for its anti-ballistic missile interceptors.

“We had just come to terms that there would be no missiles NATO missile defense systems in Poland…but it was suddenly announced that the same missile defense system deployment was planned for other European countries,” Putin told the paper.

The prime minister also censured the United States for selling arms to Georgia.

He said the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia could have been prevented, if Georgia had not been re-armed.