NATO-Russia Founding Act effectively not working now - Russian Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - The Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation, signed in 1997, is not working anymore, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"The NATO members are undermining the NATO-Russia Founding Act with their actions. And it is Europe's last remaining instrument of ensuring military restraint, after the U.S. side refused to ratify the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and have dismantled the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies. But one needs to admit that, in reality, the Founding Act is not working now," Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's European Cooperation Department Nikolai Kobrinets said in an interview with Interfax.

"The Russian side believes that the reinforcement of 'the eastern flank' is against the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 as part of which the North-Atlantic bloc reiterated that 'in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defense and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces,'" the diplomat said.

"NATO has been blatantly cheating for many years when it came to the term 'substantial combat forces.' Its additional contingents in the Baltic region and Poland are formally deployed on the rotation basis, but in reality are permanent and fully combat ready," Kobrinets said.