If Eastern European countries reject NATO-induced military threats to Russia, Moscow could be peaceful neighbor for them - LDPR

MOSCOW. Feb 24 (Interfax) - The Russian Liberal-Democratic Party has called on the countries of Eastern Europe to denounce what it sees as military threats created by NATO so that Russia could become a peaceful partner for them.

"The LDPR is convinced that, in the current situation, the best security strategy for the countries of Eastern Europe that have been squeezed into NATO in the past decades would be their voluntary renouncement of military threats to Russia created there. In other words, if NATO refuses to bring its missiles and its bases (whatever they are called) back to where they were in 1997, you should refuse from them yourselves, and Russia will never be a threat but will always be a peaceful and beneficial neighbor and partner to you," the LDPR said on Thursday.

"The Russian president's decision to conduct a special military operation to protect Russian population and Russia's borders is a peacekeeping mission and an example of a farsighted and preemptive policy," it said.

The Russian president called on all Russian parliamentary parties to display solidarity, "and the LDPR will display such solidarity," it said.

"The root cause of the events ongoing in Ukraine is the obnoxious and aggressive behavior of the U.S. and military institutions under its control. Over the past 30 years, they've been reshaping the world to the detriment of interests of whole countries and nations. And Russia has tolerated NATO's movement to the East of Europe for years, although this has posed more and more threats to us," the LDPR said.

"At the same time, the U.S. has rejected all of Russia's concerns and peaceful proposals on Eastern Europe's demilitarization. In fact, it is the collective West itself that has brought the situation to a crisis by sneering at and rejecting all of Russia's proposals. Moreover, they openly provoked Ukrainian nationalists into taking revenge on Russians in Donbas and in Crimea for their decisions," it said.

"Preparations for Ukraine's accession to NATO and the statements on the reinstatement of nuclear weapons there crossed the red line, which ruined the entire concept of Russia's defense, and now this problem is being resolved by the Russian Defense Ministry," it said.