NATO’s allegations about the Zapad-2017 Russian-Belarusian joint military drills being aggressive have turned out to be false, while the alliance still hasn’t pulled its troops out of the Baltic States, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting with students of Azerbaijan’s Diplomatic Academy.
“They [NATO] deployed troops to the Eastern Europe citing the so-called Russian threat, they even said that the Zapad-2017 Russian-Belarusian exercises had been aimed at preparing an aggression against the Baltic States, and that Russia wanted to conquer Belarus as well,” the Russian top diplomat said.
“But none of those allegations proved to be true, they all turned out false. Nevertheless, the troops they sent to the Baltic States in order to counter the threat that, they believed, the Zapad-2017 drills posed, still remain there,” Lavrov pointed out.