NATO Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said on Monday that Russia has no right to interfere in the process of other countries joining the alliance.

"The issue of joining NATO is a matter for the candidate countries, and Russia has no right to interfere in this process or oppose it," Jens Stoltenberg told at a video conference.

Stoltenberg also denied that the expansion of NATO had worsened relations with Russia.

The NATO Secretary-General said that it is wrong to talk about NATO's eastward development because these countries themselves have decided to join NATO through democratic means.

"The Baltic states, Romania and Bulgaria, etc., themselves decided to join NATO and achieved it after meeting the desired criteria," Stoltenberg added.

"This criterion also applies to Georgia and Ukraine," he said. "These two countries have already expressed their desire to join NATO, and Russia will not be able to block them to do so."

NATO recently claimed that Russia's military activity in the member states' airspace had increased compared to the previous year and that NATO aircraft had flown more than 400 times across Europe to intercept unidentified aircraft.

NATO said 90 percent of the operations, which is about 350 missions, involved intercepting Russian aircraft. 219