In response to threats from NATO that it will be expanding its military capabilities eastward, Russia on Tuesday countered by saying such moves will only result in military recalibrations of its own.

Ahead of a NATO summit scheduled for later this week and citing repeated announcements by NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen that a new military “spearhead”— a 4,000-soldier “rapid response” fighting force—would be positioned in eastern Europe, high-ranking Russian officials were pushing back.

Public Chamber deputy secretary Sergei Ordzhonikidze, told a state news agency that Rasmussen’s plans amounted to “military hysteria” and betrayed historic promises. He said Russia’s only option would be to respond with “reciprocal measures” of its own.

“When NATO troops are approaching our borders, of course, we develop a plan,” said Ordzhonikidze. “It is a threat when troops are being stationed next to your border. I recall NATO’s commitment not to expand the bloc’s territory eastward … All that remains to us is to somehow oppose this expansion of NATO.” 

Rasmussen first publicly presented the idea for NATO’s eastward expansion last week during a sit-down interview with European newspapers. Strikingly, those reports came out just as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko were sitting down in Minsk, Belarus for their first face-to-face meeting over the deadly crisis in Ukraine. The timing of Rasmussen’s comments was not lost on Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“There is one very interesting fact,” Lavrov said Tuesday during a live TV interview, “that this [NATO] initiative appeared right after the meeting in Minsk where agreements on the process of the Contact Group were trying to find a commonly acceptable decision on the current domestic crisis in Ukraine.”

Lavrov categorized U.S. statements and Rasmussen’s talk of NATO expansion as a conscious effort to undermine fragile peace efforts now underway between the Ukrainian rebels in the east and leaders of the Kiev government.

“It’s quite unfortunate that such moods in strengthening the positions of the ‘war party’ are actively warmed up and urged on out of Washington and several European capitals, and more and more often out of Brussels and from the NATO Headquarters where the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Alliance with or without reason comes out with announcements that do not fall under his jurisdiction,” Lavrov said.

In separate comments, Russian Security Council deputy secretary Mikhail Popov told RIA Novosti that in response to NATO’s push to expand, plans are now underway to make changes to Russia’s military doctrine “triggered by geopolitical factors, including NATO’s activities next to Russian borders and the situation in Ukraine.”