The Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council said that in the period after the end of the Cold War, NATO went far beyond its initial goals.
Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev spoke at the opening ceremony of the exhibition entitled NATO: The Chronicle of Cruelty. The exhibition was organised by the Museum of the Contemporary History of Russia with support from the Russian Historical Society, MGIMO, the Russia – My History Association of Historical Parks, TASS and Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.
The exhibition was timed to coincide with the date of establishing the North-Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which is 4 April 1949.
In his speech Konstantin Kosachev noted that in the period after the end of the Cold War, NATO went far beyond its initial goals, which were dictated by the logic of confrontation with the Soviet Union.
“Whereas during the entire course of the Cold War only four countries joined NATO, after 1991, in the absence of the USSR and the previous full-scale threats, NATO’s expansion waves swept through another 14 countries,” said Konstantin Kosachev, calling the history of NATO a genuine “chronicle of cruelty”. “During that time the NATO military conducted 42 military operations in other countries around the world, which invariably took a heavy toll and inflicted suffering on the civilian population attacked by the ‘defensive organisation’”, he added.
Other speakers at the opening ceremony included General Director of the Museum of the Contemporary History of Russia Irina Velikanova, Chief of the Presidential Directorate for Social Projects Sergei Novikov and Chair of the Russian Historical Society Sergei Naryshkin.