Press TV has interviewed Bill Jones, a member of the Executive Intelligence Review in Leesburg, about NATO leaders agreeing to deploy thousands of troops in Poland and the Baltic states in a bid to strengthen the 28-nation alliance’s eastern borders in Europe against Russia.

A rough transcription of the interview appears below.

Press TV: NATO leaders have agreed this unprecedented expansion to face so-called Russian aggression but it seems that this level of expansion has to have more behind it. What do you think is the real long-term objective that NATO is trying to reach here and somehow using Russia as the pseudo excuse?

Jones: It seems to me that it is similar to a pre-war mobilization because by putting in these 6,000 troops, so-called on a rotating basis, obviously there is going to be a response on the Russian side. They are going to increase their defenses. NATO has now moved to its borders which NATO said it would never do once upon a time when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. Now they are there, they do represent a threat and Russia will take countermeasures on this.

How will NATO react then again I think they will also take countermeasures. So you have an escalation going on and all you need is an incident and of course we have seen closeness of the planes flying and the ships patrolling in the seas on the border of Russia, an incident can incur at any time, today, tomorrow, who knows when, and sometimes this type of thing is hard to keep under control and to contain. So it is a very dangerous situation going on in a region unfortunately which is in the Baltic states and in Poland is really obsessively anti-Russian. So it is a very critical situation and I think bodes very ill, potentially we are looking at a warfare unless the directionality is changed.

Press TV: NATO while it is swarming around Russia’s borders, at the same time you hear them calling for Moscow to engage in talks towards peace. What’s your take on this?

Jones: I think Russia would engage in talks. I think Kerry is talking all the time with Lavrov and the reason we have not had talks between Gerasimov and his counterpart is that the US was not interested in that. The US over the last two years has defined Russia as an enemy, allegedly because of what happened in Crimea, then they have used that as a pretext to say Russia is an expansionist now. Anybody who knows the Crimea situation and the type of operations that were being run in Ukraine by Victoria Nuland and others to try and pull Ukraine away from Russia understand the reaction of the Russians by moving into an area which was predominantly populated by Russians and which had traditionally belonged to Russia.

This is not an expansionist move on their part. They are not going to invade the Baltic states, Russia has no interest in that, no gain to make in that, same thing with Poland, so why this escalation on the Russian borders? I think the Russians are interpreting this differently and they feel that they indeed are threatened and that may very well be the case because of intent behind this is anybody’s guess what the ultimate goal is.

Press TV: It is funny that NATO is calling Russia the threat, at the same time like you just said Russia is seeing them as the provocation?

Jones: Yes absolutely. There is no reason for people to believe ..., I mean the problem you have is that in NATO now, from the beginning the eastern states, that is Poland and the Baltic states have increased the weight of their decision making at the cost of countries like France and Germany. NATO is less united than you may think.

We saw what is happening in the EU and the Brexit. People are saying well, the EU is falling apart but NATO is not going to fall apart. Well Great Britain is going to have more of a difficulty in maintaining their military spending because of the economic consequences of the Brexit and in Germany what we are seeing is more of an intent to try and engage with Russia and largely they are being pressured by the United States not to go so far. The Foreign Minister of Germany who is a great ally with the NATO has cut the brunt of a lot of the criticism of the United States who consider him to Russia friendly.

So the war moves in the east because of the demands of countries like Poland and the Baltic states who say they are in danger - they have always said that - is going to lead to more cracks within NATO itself and the NATO alliance because no country really wants to go to war, a war in Europe which would lead to their own destruction. So I think you will see a lot of opposition to this coming up as we move forward.