© REUTERS/Sergei Ilnitsky/PoolRussia's President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting of the State Council and the Presidential Council for Culture and Art, at the Kremlin in Moscow, December 24, 2014
Moscow's previous military doctrine, signed by Putin in 2010, also identified NATO expansion as a top risk to Russia, but the stakes have risen sharply over the past year.
Russia said this week NATO was turning Ukraine into a "frontline of confrontation" and threatened to sever remaining ties if Ukraine's hopes of joining NATO were realized.
The Kiev parliament's renunciation of Ukraine's neutral status on Tuesday in pursuit of NATO membership has outraged Moscow and deepened the worst confrontation between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula this year.
NATO has already boosted its military presence in eastern Europe this year, saying it has evidence that Russia orchestrated and armed a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine that followed the overthrow of a Kremlin-backed president in Kiev.
Moscow denies supporting the rebellion, and is currently trying, along with Kiev and the rebels, to renew efforts to find a political solution to the crisis in eastern Ukraine.
It is likely to take years for Ukraine to meet the technical criteria for accession to NATO and, even then, there is no certainty that the alliance is ready to take such a decision.
A NATO official said on Friday the alliance respected the move by Ukraine's parliament, and so should Russia.
"Should Ukraine decide to apply for NATO membership, NATO will assess its readiness to join the Alliance in the same way as with any candidate. This is an issue between NATO and the individual countries aspiring to membership."
Comment: It's not just Russia that NATO threatens. The whole world is endangered by the U.S.-controlled NATO. Psychopathic Western leaders are trying to take over the whole world and keep all of humanity under their thumbs. Putin is one of the few people who seems willing to stand up to them and show that there is some humanity left on the global political stage. Let's hope others join him.