In a telephone call Monday between Russia's Defense Minister General Sergei Shoigu and the U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel, Shoigu described the activity of U.S. and NATO troops near Russia's border as "unprecedented." According to the official Russian version of the call, his American counterpart assured him the alliance did not have "provocative or expansionist" intentions -- and that Russia should know this. But it hardly seems to matter how often NATO makes these assurances. The Kremlin will never trust them. Fear of the Western military alliance's steady march east is deep-rooted. It strikes at the very heart of Russia's national sense of security, a relic of Cold War enmity which has seeped down to post-Soviet generations.
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In cadet school, Russian pupils have questions for NATO
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They ask: why do you need to be on our border
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Putin used strategic military reasoning to annexe Crimea
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Among general public, there's a feeling that Russia is at last standing up for its rights
"No such pledge was made, and no evidence to back up Russia's claims has ever been produced," the alliance wrote in an April fact sheet entitled "@placeholder's accusations -- setting the record straight."
"After the @placeholder Russia tried several times to become a member and the Americans always said, 'it's not going to happen.'"