US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO ) is not the cause of the Ukrainian conflict.
„I would respectfully disagree with your assertion that NATO expansion caused the Ukraine crisis,” he said in response to questions at Singapore's Shangri-La Dialogue security forum, which was broadcast on the website of The Pentagon. The American minister blamed the Russian authorities for the Ukrainian conflict.
Earlier, the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that the Western countries deceived Moscow and took up the expansion of NATO, and thus have forced Russia to start the "special military operation" As Peskov emphasized, “this is not just an expansion of NATO, this is an expansion of NATO's military infrastructure to the borders of the Russian Federation”.