MOSCOW. Nov 24 (Interfax) - NATO's allegations on the concentration of Russian forces near the Ukrainian border are fake, says Russia's permanent envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko.
"As far as I understand, even NATO officials themselves admit that they lack objective documentary evidence indicating the movement of weapons and hardware across the border and major concentrations of Russian forces on the border with Ukraine," Grushko said in an interview shown on the Rossiya-24 news television channel on Friday.
"Moreover, I would like to emphasize that we have repeatedly presented proof at the Forum for Security Cooperation, which is one of the OSCE's principal bodies, that all of NATO's allegations regarding the so-called concentration are fake," he added.
"NATO is pursuing its line in such a way as to portray Russia as a party to the conflict all the time," Grushko said. "Therefore, all allegations about the concentration of troops and about some movements of troops across the border are aimed only at making it harder for public opinion to correctly perceive what is going in Ukraine. Public opinion should not understand that the crisis in Ukraine was caused by absolutely different reasons and that it was the West itself that played its extremely negative role, but it should think that this is the work of Moscow," he said.
"Therefore, NATO is targeting all its ideology and propaganda at portraying Russia as a party in the conflict," he said.
"There are several dimensions in the propaganda campaign that has been launched against Russia in the West today," Grushko said.
One of these dimensions has to do with the West's desire "to prove that the decisions made at the Wales summit were justified, and they were primarily about turning the NATO military machinery toward repelling the so-called threat from the East," he said.
"After all, the Western European public will sooner or later start thinking about the decisions made in Wales and asking questions about them, namely what these actions are and what results of these actions could be for European security, and lastly, as this is quite an expensive program, where the money is going while Europe is experiencing a crisis," Grushko said.