MOSCOW, July 30. /TASS/. Non-NATO members Moldova and Georgia are ideal proxy springboards for confrontation with Russia, since they are not covered by Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which the West actively uses by deploying its weapons and training the local military systematically as part of large-scale international drills, Alexander Stepanov, a military expert at the Institute of Law and National Security of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, said.
"The fact that Moldova is not a member of the [North Atlantic] Alliance and, accordingly, is not subject to the rules related to Article 5 of the NATO Charter on Collective Defense, makes it suitable for deploying forces and assets as part of the strategy to neutralize the military potential of the Russian Armed Forces in the Northern Black Sea region, generally excluding direct negative consequences for the rest of the bloc's countries," the expert, who is also a senior researcher at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told TASS.
He explained that by using Moldova as a proxy, NATO avoids the risk of being directly drawn into a military confrontation with Russia. The non-aligned status of a country is a determining factor that contributes to a tacit buildup of enemy forces and assets, including the deployment of training bases for personnel of the national armed forces and special services.
