Russia responds to NATO moves on its border

Reuters:

Russia's top general said on Friday that Moscow would retaliate against increased NATO activity near its border as tensions with the western alliance over Ukraine escalate.

Since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region, NATO has moved to reassure its nervous eastern European allies. Ships and planes have been temporarily deployed to their countries and military exercises in the region stepped up.

"NATO's military groupings in the Baltic states, Poland and Romania are being built up, as well as the military presence of the bloc in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Sea," General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of general staff of the Russian armed forces, told a defense conference in Moscow.

"The intensity, the operational and combat readiness of the alliance's troops is being increased near the Russian border. In these circumstances ... we have to take retaliatory measures."

Russia has long been wary of the expansion of the military bloc of 28 nations into eastern Europe, with President Vladimir Putin saying last month that his annexation of Crimea was partly influenced by NATO enlargement.
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Russia was responding more to its loss of hegemony over Ukraine than to NATO expansion in its move to annex Crimea.  Its loss of hegemony was the result of the failure of the Russian economic model in Ukraine.  The NATO forces are actually of little threat to Russia.  There is not sufficient mass to threaten Russia, but they are attempting to make the position of the neighboring states more defensible.  That Russia finds that threatening tells you something about their ambitions and paranoia.