Russia official urges end to ‘horror stories’ about Moscow

A senior Russian defense official has urged an end to “horror stories” about Moscow and its military ambitions, stressing that the country does not want war.

"We need to put an end to the spread of horror stories, that Russia is allegedly going to send its tanks to the Baltics, to Sofia or Budapest,” Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov told Deutsche Welle on Thursday.

Ever since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s suspension of all ties with Moscow in April 2014, the military alliance has been deploying troops and equipment to its eastern frontier with Russia to counter what it calls “the Russian aggression.”

“Russia does not want war. It's just ridiculous to claim that Russia plans to fight," Antonov noted.

Western pressure on Moscow surged in March 2014, when Crimea declared independence from Ukraine and reunified with Russia following a referendum. The violence intensified in April 2014, after Kiev deployed troops to the eastern Ukrainian regions of Lugansk and Donetsk to suppress pro-Russians.

The escalation of conflict prompted the US and the European Union to impose harsh economic sanctions against Russia, targeting Moscow’s military and energy sectors over its alleged involvement in the ongoing crisis that has so far claimed more than 9,000 lives.

Moreover, the US and its allies in NATO bolstered their military presence in former Soviet states near Russia’s borders and arranged major military drills that simulated Russian offensives against Baltic nations - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Several war games conducted between 2014 and 2015 proved that the US-led alliance was unable to stop the advance of mechanized Russian units in the Baltic region, according to the RAND Corporation, a US military think tank.

Some senior US officials have gone so far as accusing Moscow of trying to trigger a new Cold War between the two countries.

“A lot of these aggressive things that the Russians are doing, for a number of reasons -- great power status, to create the image of being co-equal with the United States etc -- I think could probably… go on, and we could be into another Cold War-like spiral here," James Clapper (pictured above), the director of US National Intelligence, said in February.

Russia views NATO’s military expansion on its borders as an infringement on its western borders and has for several times called on the 28-member organization to stop.

The Russian official's comments come days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered its military forces to partially withdraw from Syria in the wake of a Russia-US brokered cessation of hostilities in the war-torn country.

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