NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has stated that the bloc will not under any circumstances sacrifice its basic principle that any country may choose its own defence alliances, APA reports citing Sputnik.
Stoltenberg further stressed that the alliance can’t accept the notion of creating “second-class” allies at Russia’s whim: “We are ready to engage in arms control with Russia, conventional and nuclear, but that has to be reciprocal. That’s a different thing [from] imposing one-sided restrictions […] we can’t end up in a situation where we have second-class NATO members where NATO as an alliance is not allowed to protect them”.