(para 4 of news item issued at 2.58 p.m. adjusted)
MOSCOW. Dec 10 (Interfax-AVN) - The promotion of the "hostile Russia" thesis against the backdrop of the Ukrainian events has helped NATO create political prerequisites for further advancement of its military infrastructure towards the Russian border, Russian Armed Forces General Staff Chief Gen. of the Army Valery Gerasimov said.
"The alliance has been enlarging its ground, airborne and seaborne groups in Poland, the Baltic region and the Black and Baltic Seas. NATO has stepped up military exercises and drills practicing a far-fetched scenario of "deterring a threat from the East"," Gerasimov told foreign military attaches on Wednesday.
"The rhetoric of representatives of certain Western states, especially North Atlantic Alliance members, presents Russia as the direct culprit behind the events that happened in Ukraine over the past year and developed into an armed domestic conflict in the southeast," he said.
"Yet it was the support from Western countries that helped depose the legitimately elected president of Ukraine although he had been personally given security guarantees by the foreign ministers of Poland, France and Germany," Gerasimov said.