Grushko spoke about the growth of NATO military spending

The total amount of military budgets of NATO countries today exceeds half of global expenditures, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told Izvestia.

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"This is a huge amount of money that is actually being withdrawn from peaceful development and thrown away. It is also a consolidation of dependence on the United States. The United States openly demands that the increased costs it seeks be used to purchase weapons and equipment from the United States of America. This is a clear technological link: if you buy, say, an F-35 aircraft with a life cycle of 30-40 years, then you are dependent on the manufacturer, that is, on the United States," Alexander Grushko explained to Izvestia.

NATO's actions on military planning, infrastructure development, and reformatting command structures are a reproduction of the Cold War with very serious consequences for stability and peace in Europe and globally, Grushko said.

"Deterring Russia has been declared the main strategic objective of the bloc, and now the goal of NATO's military construction is to gain superiority in all operational environments: land, water, land, space and cyberspace. It also declares the need for superiority in all theaters (of military operations — Ed.)," the diplomat noted.

In the current situation, Russia is forced to react to what is happening. Moscow will not allow our defense capability and our security to weaken, but we will not get involved in a costly arms race, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister concluded.

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