Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, during the 2013 Zapad exercices | Pool photo by Alexey Novosti/EPA EU CONFIDENTIAL Russia ‘downright lying’ about military exercises: Slovak ex-envoy Tomáš Valášek, think tank chief and former ambassador to NATO, says Moscow is playing a dangerous game.

As Russia begins its Zapad war games, the West should be worried about Moscow "downright lying about the size and the type" of military exercises it holds, according to Tomáš Valášek, the former Slovak ambassador to NATO, who now heads the Carnegie Europe think tank.

In an interview with POLITICO's EU Confidential podcast, Valášek said fears that Moscow would use the exercise as a springboard to attack or invade a neighbor were overblown. But he said Russia was not complying with the spirit of the Vienna Document — an international agreement under which nations are meant to provide details of major military exercises and allow other countries to monitor them.

"The fact that the Russians don't really apply the document should worry us," Valášek said. "In the future, there may well be a situation where we want proper monitoring when the tensions between east and west are much higher than they are today. And [when] we don't have that recourse then it makes everybody jumpy, right?"

"It makes the Western countries feel that they need to respond with an exercise of their own and that's how accidents happen," he said.

NATO has accused Moscow of under-reporting the number of soldiers involved in the exercise, taking place in Russia and Belarus, to keep it under the threshold of 13,000 that would require the invitation of international monitors, according to the Vienna Document. NATO has said it will send two experts to "international visitors' days" during the exercise, at the invitation of Belarus, but does not regard this as real monitoring.

In remarks to POLITICO in July, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, accused the West of fear-mongering over the exercise and said NATO had escalated tensions by increasing its presence in Eastern Europe. He said Russia routinely invited journalists and other monitors to observe both drills and active military operations, such as those in Syria.

EU ups its defense game

Looking at the EU's efforts to boost defense cooperation between its members, Valášek said Brussels had upped its game.

"There's more and more substance in defense policy," he said. "And I speak as someone who has observed it, watched it and has written about it for now nigh on two decades."

Valášek said the key shift is that the EU — through the European Defense Fund — is now offering substantial financial incentives for countries that work together to buy military hardware.

Fish stick diplomacy

Valášek praised the efforts of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to offer "an olive branch and seek to cool off the divides" between Eastern and Western Europe.

In Juncker's State of the European Union speech, he committed to addressing bread-and-butter issues such as international brands using cheaper ingredients for products in Eastern Europe. Juncker said "Slovaks deserve as much fish in their fish sticks as anyone else, and Czechs deserve as much cocoa in their chocolate.”

The food issue is a symbol of several serious divides that threaten to overwhelm East-West relations in Europe.

Valášek said that perhaps for the first time in the EU's 60 years, "on all the big issues of the day, whether it's the answer to the migration crisis, whether it's rule of law, whether it's taxation ... we're basically looking at the same dividing line" of old member countries versus new members.

Trouble ahead in next EU budget

Valášek said that if East-West tensions are not addressed in the coming year, deeper problems lie ahead.

"We're looking at the mother of all debates," he said, referring to Commissioner Günther Oettinger's plans for the EU's next long-term budget. The budget is expected to run for either five or seven years from 2021.

The U.K.'s departure from the EU will leave a gap of up to €10 billion per year in the EU's finances.

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