Russia’s Lavrov: NATO wants to ‘drag’ Ukraine into alliances

By JIM HEINTZ
Associated Press

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s foreign minister has claimed that NATO wants to pull Ukraine into the alliance amid escalating tensions over NATO expansion and fears that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s comments on state television Sunday also challenged NATO’s claim to be a purely defensive structure.  Russia’s massing of an estimated 100,000 troops near the border with Ukraine has brought increasingly strong warnings from the West that Moscow intends to invade. Russia in turn demands that NATO promise never to allow Ukraine to join the alliance, and to stop the deployment of NATO weapons near Russian borders and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe.