Russia warns neighbours over NATO ambitions

ST PETERSBURG, Russia - New Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made clear on Friday the Kremlin had not softened its opposition to NATO expansion, warning ex-Soviet neighbours of serious consequences if they join the alliance.
Medvedev has projected a conciliatory style since he took over as president last month from ex-KGB spy Vladimir Putin, and in a speech in Berlin this week he signalled a new approach by saying: "Russia has returned from the cold."
But at his first meeting in his new post with ex-Soviet leaders on Friday, Medvedev demonstrated that any foreign policy thaw did not extend to plans by Western-leaning Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO.
In talks with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in the Tsarist-era Constantine Palace near St Petersburg, Medvedev said Tbilisi's entry into the alliance could lead to bloodshed in breakaway regions of Georgia, a Russian official said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, briefing reporters on the talks, said Moscow wanted to see the conflicts over separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia resolved.
"We stated this could not be achieved by moving Georgia artificially into NATO because this would lead to another spiral of confrontation in the area," he said.
"If they think this (NATO membership) would be an instrument to solve the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, this is an illusion. We could only watch another bloodshed."
Earlier on Friday, at talks with Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko, Medvedev warned that Kiev would be in breach of a friendship treaty between the two countries if it joins NATO.
"The treaty between Russia and Ukraine ... contains the obligation on the two parties not to do anything which would create threats or risks for the security of the other party," Lavrov said.
"We do believe NATO expansion, which would include Ukraine, would create a risk for Russian security."
If Russia were to scrap the treaty, some observers believe it could open the way for Moscow to challenge Kiev's sovereignty over the Crimea Peninsula, a region Russia has historically seen as its own and which is home to its Black Sea fleet.
Security threat
Moscow was angered when, at a NATO summit in the Romanian capital Bucharest in April, member states gave Georgia and Ukraine an undertaking they could eventually join, though they did not give them a firm timetable for accession.
Moscow says bringing Kiev and Tbilisi into the alliance will threaten its security because NATO will use the new members as a bridgehead to bring its troops and weapons right up to Russia's south-western flank.
Russia has economic reasons too for wanting to prevent the two states from moving further out of its orbit.
Ukraine has deep economic ties to Russia inherited from the Soviet Union, and it is also the transit route by which Russia exports most of its natural gas to Europe.
Georgia is part of an energy corridor linking the Caspian Sea -- a growing source of oil and gas -- to world markets. The West and Russia are competing for influence over that route.
Russian officials deny using Georgia's breakaway regions to influence Tbilisi's policies, but some observers say the conflicts there provide Moscow with a useful pressure point.
Moscow supports the separatists, though it has not recognised their independence, and this year moved extra troops into Abkhazia to counter what it said was a Georgian plan to attack the region.
"The main drive for Russian policy so far this year has probably been not Abkhazia itself," said a Western diplomat.
"They took a series of steps which look, the way they rolled them out, like a coordinated plan for responding to what NATO and the West had done," he said.