"NATO drills to be used as cover-up for invasion on Russia"

"Scares and speculations" surrounding Russian military drills are a smokescreen for NATO's military buildup in Eastern Europe, where the alliance is effectively mastering a potential new battlefield, the Russian permanent representative to NATO says.

"We pointed out that while a lot of insinuations, completely unjustified from our point of view, are being spread around the Zapad-2017 drills, NATO's funneling of arms and materiel into its eastern flank is going unnoticed," Russia's permanent representative to NATO, Aleksandr Grushko, told reporters following a meeting of the Russia-NATO council on Thursday.

"Speaking about solely military activities, NATO will hold some 15 drills complementing each other in the period between July and November, which are held in the same operative field and aimed at providing a vast range of support measures," Grushko...