Of course, NATO Secretary General was overwhelmed by President Putin’s frankness. What an extraordinary thing — Russian President speaking just like that, frankly. This is not some kind of "waste them in the shit-house" or "look this way, listen to me". This is the frankness of international scale.

Supposedly, the usual practice among Russian foreign ministers is to go to other countries by coincidence. They would go to an airport, look at the departures time-table, rub their chins pensively and pick a destination: "Why don’t I go to the United Kingdom, or better still Teheran — it’s warmer there and the flight departs earlier." But that’s the usual practice. On the contrary, Lavrov’s visit to Brussels was no coincidence as it happens. Everything was carefully planned.

As a cadre intelligence worker, Putin could hardly send his minister to Brussels on an intelligence mission — it just happened that during the last few days NATO was expanding by eight Eastern-European states, who managed to make a successful breakout from a collapsed socialist camp.
Minister Lavrov’s visit evidently was meant to demonstrate at diplomatic level that Russia treats NATO expansion quite tolerantly. Moscow doesn’t approve of this expansion but puts up with it. Winces but says nothing. As if it is just one of these Western whims that in general must be treated with condescension. That was the reason why Putin explained to the naive NATO Secretary General that "mechanical expansion does not allow us to effectively oppose the main threats we face today. This expansion could not prevent, say, terrorist acts in Madrid or help us resolve the issues of rebuilding Afghanistan." So all the efforts are in vain, Putin let Mr. Scheffer know. However, condescending attitude to the issue of NATO expansion to the East is for external use only. It was said that the world must not be unipolar. Following this theorem, Kremlin stands at the opposite pole for internal use purposes. The court political analysts, guided State Duma MPs and militant generals call to repulse NATO expansion to the East to an extent that NATO patrol aircraft would be shot down without hesitation should they cross into Russian airspace even by a centimetre. Militant calls find an eager response in the hearts of Communists, Nationalist Patriots and adherents of Russia’s own way. The very way that our country followed for almost all of XX century fencing itself off from the world with an iron curtain and threatening it with nuclear missiles and other more basic weapons.


By stirring up anti-Western moods in Russia and demonstrating reason and tolerance in contacts with Western politicians, Kremlin reveals a complete absence of a clear-cut concept for external policy but gains an opportunity to pick this or that route for relations with the West depending on political situation at any given time. So here you have the advantage of multi-polar approach or pluralism in one separate head.

Having got carried away with political manoeuvring, Kremlin fails to admit the obvious: a Russia that is unpredictable and burdened with the history of aggressive wars against its neighbours, inspires mindless fear in the countries sharing its border. Our neighbours are rushing into NATO not because they want a tasty piece of the Russian territory
(a whale of a treat) but because they do not want to fall victim to expansionist policy that is brewing in the depths of Kremlin, and nobody knows at what point and in what shape or form it will spill out.

If Russia doesn’t make its choice in favour of democracy, it will inevitably cause suspicion and fear in its neighbours. This has already resulted and will result in their wish to protect their statehood with the help of partnership with the West. In particular, military partnership.