AFP, Moscow :
Russia vowed on Tuesday to adopt a beefed-up military doctrine over NATO’s plans to establish a rapid-response team that could ward off the Kremlin’s expansion into Ukraine and feared push further west.
Moscow’s surprise announcement added a new and threatening new layer of tensions ahead of NATO’s two-day summit that starts Thursday in Wales and will see Ukraine’s beleaguered leader Petro Poroshenko personally lobby US President Barack Obama for military help.
The Ukrainian president’s appeal for European assistance in the face of Russia’s alleged dispatch of crack troops into the separatist east of his ex-Soviet country was effectively cast aside by EU leaders meeting over the weekend in Brussels.
But NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in Brussels that the 28-nation alliance would endorse the establishment of a force of “several thousand troops” that could be deployed within “very few days” to meet any perceived Russian military movements in eastern Europe.
The New York Times reported the rapid-response unit would be supported by new NATO members such as Poland that were once Soviet satellites but now view Russian President Vladimir Putin with fear and mistrust.
Moscow’s answer to NATO’s intentions was instant and furious.
