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PARIS. – NATO is the biggest threat to global peace since it is pushing the European Union toward confrontation with Russia and China and is seeking to destroy the “buffer zone” by forcing neutral states to take sides in this confrontation, a French member of the European Parliament told TASS on Monday.

“Thanks to widespread NATO propaganda, it is becoming clear that the organization, which was once described by [French President] Emmanuel Macron as brain dead, is morphing from a trans-Atlantic alliance into a global structure,” Herve Juvin, a member of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE), said ahead of a NATO summit due to be held in Madrid on June 28-30.

According to Juvin, NATO considers the European Union as “a registration office of its members” and, being guided by this logic, is mounting pressure on such countries as Georgia, Armenia, and Ukraine, “which have never been part of Europe either geographically, or politically, or in humanitarian terms,” as well as on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Kosovo with an eye of admitting them to the US-led military bloc.

“This is a dangerous step because it eliminates the entire security space, the buffer zone the great powers have given each other as a price for their security. NATO is the number one threat to peace in the entire world because it is encircling Russia and is getting prepared to encircle China. 

“And the European Union’s kowtowing to NATO, which, as a matter of fact, is serving Anglo-American interests, radically alien to Europe. This is the result of the shocking ignorance of European governments and those who were installed there by them at the helm of European institutions,” he stated.

He compared the current security situation with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States deployed intermediate-range missiles in Turkey and the former Soviet Union deployed its military in Cuba. 

However, “diplomacy won the upper hand” back then and the sides recognized mutual concerns in the security sphere, the French lawmaker noted, adding that in the current situation Washington should reckon with Moscow’s concerns and withdraw its intermediate-range missiles from Poland and Romania, and shut down its biolabs and chemical weapons research centres at Russia’s borders.

“But American diplomacy, which used to respect other powers, has fallen into the hands of a tribe of neoconservatives, who dream of biblically crushing any enemy. The key danger lies in disregarding the reality, so characteristic of American and, hence, European politics today. There is nothing more dangerous in foreign politics than to divide people into bad and good guys,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted Indonesia’s invitation to take part in a summit meeting of the Group of 20, but the details are still being specified, presidential aide Yury Ushakov told the media on Monday.

“Yes, we have confirmed. Our participation is due,” he said.

At the same time, he was uncertain whether Putin would attend the meeting in person or participate by video link.

“I do not know. For now, they have invited to participate personally, but there is much time left. I hope that the pandemic situation will permit to hold this important forum face to face. I’d like to avoid guessing,” he said.

Some countries, he remarked, remained closed in the context of the pandemic.

“We have received an official invitation, which is very important in the light of the pressure the Indonesians have been and still are exposed to,” he added. Ushakov stressed that this issue would be on the agenda of the Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s visit to Moscow on June 30.

“We thanked him for the invitation and said that we would be interested to participate. There is much time left. We’ll see,” Ushakov concluded. He recalled that Widodo had invited Mr Putin to participate in the G20 summit on Bali on November 15-16. – TASS