– A source of danger – Dagsavisen

– NATO is de facto a party to the Ukraine conflict, and is actively involved in organizing attacks on Russian territories, Nikolaj Patrushev claims, according to Reuters.

He refers, among other things, to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and weapons factories, writes the news agency.

Patrushev, who heads Russia’s Security Council, at the same time repeats the Kremlin’s claims that the US and the West “want to remove Russia from the political map”. He also claims that NATO’s policy as a whole is controlled from Washington DC

The US, for its part, has stated on several occasions that it does not support Ukrainian attacks inside Russia, writes Reuters.

Sweden’s former Prime Minister Carl Bildt has previously snorted at Russian claims of aggression on NATO’s part.

– It is of course nonsense. Nato is exclusively a military defense alliance, Bildt wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

– A result of Russian aggression

To the Russian state news agency Tass, Nikolaj Patrushev says that “one must know NATO’s bloody history to understand the nature of the alliance as a long-term source of danger, crises and conflicts”.

– NATO’s history indicates the threats the alliance poses to the world, says Patrushev, though without elaborating on this.

In connection with the Russians’ claims about the West’s hostile attitude towards Russia, researcher Karsten Friis at the Norwegian Foreign Policy Institute (Nupi) has previously stated to Dagsavisen that it is Russia itself that has caused NATO’s development, after Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 – which then culminated in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later.

– From 1990 until quite recently, European defense was sharply cut, up to 80 per cent in many places. It was only after Russia’s attack in 2014 that it slowly began to increase again. The trend only reversed around 2018. There were also no NATO bases at the “new” members until after 2014. They came as a result of Russian aggression, Friis pointed out this autumn.

Some of the statements coming from the Kremlin are probably as much aimed at the population of Russia as at the West, Friis believes.

– It is useful to point to a dangerous world outside, which Putin protects the Russians from, the Nupi researcher told Dagsavisen in connection with a statement from Dmitry Peskov in February.

The power of the Putin adviser

The British Russia expert Mark Galeotti has pointed out to Dagsavisen why Nikolaj Patrushev has a lot of power in the Kremlin.

– Russia is at war, and Patrushev is de facto Putin’s national security adviser.

“Under Patrushev, Russia’s National Security Council has become one of the most powerful institutions in Putin’s Kremlin. Patrushev does not bow to anyone other than Putin,” Galeotti claimed in an article in The Spectator. He believes Patrushev has a strong influence over Putin through the information he supplies the president with.

The Brit believes that Patrushev has a unique ability to handle the president, and that it was Patrushev who pushed Putin and Russia in the direction of a war economy.

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Facts about NATO’s Article 5

• The defense alliance NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is built on the basis of the Atlantic Pact from 1949.
• Article 5 of the pact states that an armed attack against one or more of the member states of Europe or North America is an attack against all. If such an attack takes place, the individual Member State will decide for itself the means by which the attack is to be responded to.
• The article has been made applicable once, in connection with the terrorist attack against the USA on 11 September 2001.

(Source: NTB)

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