From Reuters: Russia’s new military doctrine does not identify NATO as its major threat but Moscow is disturbed by the alliance’s "endless enlargement," President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview published on Thursday.

Russia has made future NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, two former Soviet republics, a "red line" in its relations with the West. It said in the new doctrine, published on February 5, that one of the ‘main external threats of war’ came from the alliance’s eastward expansion to Russia’s borders.

"NATO is not seen as the main military threat (to Russia) in the military doctrine," Medvedev said in an interview with French weekly magazine Paris Match.

"The issue is that NATO’s endless enlargement, by absorbing countries that were once part of the Soviet Union, or who are our immediate neighbors, is of course creating problems because NATO is after all, a military bloc," he said. (photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty)