Putin says Russia planning "countermeasures" to NATO expansion

“Why are we reacting to NATO expansion so emotionally? We are concerned by NATO’s ­decision-making,” Putin said.

Smaller NATO countries would find it “next to impossible to resist pressure from a major NATO leader such as the United States” to deploy missile systems or host new bases, he said.

“And what are we supposed to do?” Putin said in the interview for Stone’s “Ukraine on Fire.”

Putin and his diplomats have threatened to strike NATO in self-defense before, as the alliance increasingly focuses on the threats it perceives from Russia.

But for the Stone interview, Putin “probably guessed that this documentary would be aired when the new POTUS was already elected, so in part that’s messaging to the new president,” said Simon Saradzhyan, founding director of the Russia Matters Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.