Russia: Conflict Possible If Georgia Joins NATO

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said a terrible conflict could emerge from Georgia’s accession to the NATO bloc and noted that there was no real justification of such risk. “This could provoke a terrible conflict, and it is not clear why is this necessary,” the official said in an interview with Kommersant radio, RT reported. Medvedev also emphasized that in his opinion the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia that emerged after Georgian military attacked Russian peacekeepers in the self-proclaimed republic of South Ossetia could have been avoided. “There was no inevitability of this,” he said. In 2008, Medvedev was the President of the Russian Federation and it was him who gave the order to the Russian military to intervene and repel the Georgian aggression. Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin have repeatedly stated that NATO’s expansion on the territory of the former Soviet Union would only bring additional tensions in the world as Russia would have to reply to the buildup of foreign military forces near its borders.