Lavrov Condemns  NATO Exercises in  Black Sea  as Attempt to    Contain Russia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced today, Monday, that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO) exercises in the Black Sea are linked to the intention of the United States and its allies to escalate the containment policy of Russia.

"I think that the NATO exercises are linked to the pursuit of the United States and its allies to escalate the policy of containing Russia despite all the "initiatives" launched in the 1990s and embodied in the Russia-NATO agreement, the main parts of which were violated," Lavrov told reporters after his talks with his Venezuelan counterpart.

He added that Russia has been accustomed to our relations with NATO over many years to prepare for any provocations.

According to Lavrov, Russia is "fully prepared for any development of events."

Previously, the Russian FM   announced that the last NATO meeting at the level of defense ministers, which took place on October 21-22, reaffirmed that the entire huge NATO giant is still, after 70 years, aimed exclusively at "containing Russia", and after these years, the failure of the alliance to end the era of "big operations", the alliance is honing its capabilities again in the face of the "enemy in the east" as in the era of the Cold War.

On the other hand, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg had stated that the organization maintains channels of communication with Russia, and the alliance continues the dual approach to relations with Moscow, which combines defense, deterrence, and openness to dialogue.

It is worth noting that Russia's  FM announced earlier that Moscow had decided to suspend the work of its mission to the   “NATO” starting from the first of November, in a step that comes in response to the expulsion of a number of Russian diplomats accredited to NATO.

The relations between Russia and NATO have recently been tense due to the increased presence of the military alliance near the Russian borders. Which Moscow considers a violation of the basic document of relations with NATO.