WARSAW (Sputnik), Denis Bolotsky —Helicopters in the sky, police sirens wailing and hundreds of special agents in the streets: Polish capital is on lockdown. Delegates of the NATO summit travel through central Warsaw in motorcades, looking at the city through tinted windows of their black limousines.
But is appears that not everyone is happy with this overwhelming display of power. International peace movements from 14 countries sent their representatives to the Polish capital to hold an alternative summit. They are protesting against the policies of war and conflict with a motto 'No To War and to NATO Bases'.
"NATO is now really preparing last steps to surround Russia. And this is not peaceful…," says Reiner Braun, one of the organizers of the alternative summit and co-president of the International Peace Bureau. "We are worrying about the dynamic with which this situation can go. It can go to a big war. And you know that a big war in Europe will be the last one, because it will be done with the use of nuclear weapons."
Participants of Alternative Summit in Warsaw: NATO's anti-Russian rhetoric is wrong. pic.twitter.com/jeckoOuuF7
— Denis Bolotsky (@BolotskySputnik) July 8, 2016
According to many participants of the alternative summit, boosting anti-Russian moods in Poland and other European countries is part of Washington’s agenda. Sputnik interviewed Ann Wright – a retired US Army colonel and former US diplomat. She says, that her country is leading NATO in the wrong direction:
"Rhetoric that’s coming out of NATO countries about the threat from Russia, I think is totally wrong. For the United States it’s an economic way of continuing our huge amount of expenditures into the military industrial complex."
On Saturday, July 9th, participants of the Alternative Summit are going to march through the streets of Warsaw to voice their concerns about NATO expansion and the politics of war.
