Russian FM: "We are against Georgia's NATO membership"

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in the statement, "Our negative stance towards this issue is well known".

The Ministry has further elaborated in the statement on September 22 that Moscow is against Georgia's membership 'in non-transferred NATO".

"Any kind of NATO enlargement leads to significant changes in the sphere of security. But in the case of Georgia this aspect takes on a special nature because of its [Georgia’s] geographical closeness to Russia and because of the obviously complicated problems in the Caucasus," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"The practice of previous [NATO] enlargement has shown that those countries that have become alliance members are trying to solve their bilateral problems with us [Russia] through their [problems'] inclusion in the Russian-NATO agenda. In the case of Georgia, more complications of already existing problems are anticipated and will decrease the chances of their settlement. We have been explaining all these issues to official Tbilisi, but it seems that willingness to act against Russia's interest is not changing there [in Tbilisi]," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Georgia makes no secret that it wants to put the Abkhaz and South Ossetian issues into NATO’s agenda, APA reports.

"In this case, the alliance will be associated by many Russians with the actions of the Georgian current authorities, which has a mainly anti-Russian stance," the statement reads.