Intensity of NATO reconnaissance flights near Russia's borders triples in 10 years, grows 700% in southwestern sector - Shoigu
MOSCOW. Feb 21 (Interfax) - The Russian Defense Ministry has recently been recording the presence of NATO vessels carrying missile weapons in the Black Sea and reconnaissance flights near its borders increasingly more often, Russian Defense Minister Gen. of the Army Sergei Shoigu said.
"In the past ten years, the overall number of the alliance's reconnaissance flights near our borders has virtually tripled, and it has grown eight times particularly in the southwest of Russia. Just for comparison, there were 107 such flights (annually) in the 1990s, 298 in the 2000s, and 875 in 2016. We have also been recording increasingly more frequently the presence of NATO ships carrying missile weapons in the Black Sea," Shoigu said in a lecture at the opening of the 2nd all-Russia youth forum on 'International military-technical and military-economic cooperation: modern tendencies' at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) on Thursday.
"The North Atlantic alliance's leadership keeps pursuing a course toward abandoning all forms of practical cooperation with us and is continuing to frighten itself with a Russian threat," he said.
"Instead of combining efforts to fight terrorism, the alliance has declared Russia the main threat and is building up its military capacity along our borders," he said.
"NATO has significantly increased the number of exercises in Eastern Europe and in the Baltic and Black Seas. They are often openly anti-Russian in their nature and essence," Shoigu said.