MOSCOW, April 26. /TASS/. Russia has no plans to scale down cooperation with Europe on security issues despite the current global environment, Russian General Staff’s Chief, Army General Valery Gerasimov said on Wednesday.

"In current conditions, Russia is not planning to curtail cooperation on issues of ensuring security. We continue carrying out all reforms in the Armed Forces of Russia with unprecedented transparency," Gerasimov said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry is carrying out training of forces in the most open manner, he said. "We provide information on snap checks of troops. We regularly hold briefings on their results. All major military drills receive wide coverage in Russian and foreign mass media outlets," Gerasimov said.

Russia started providing more information on its Armed Forces after launching the military campaign in Syria, he said. "We plan to continue in the future the practice of inviting representatives of military agencies of NATO member-states and bodies of military administration of the alliance to take part in the events held by Russia’s Defense Ministry," he stressed.

Current state of European security

The current state of the European security fails to live up to the changing international relations, Gerasimov said.

"In order to justify the policy aimed at constraining Russia and emphasize NATO’s importance in the eyes of the European Union’s citizens, the old propaganda cliche is being used pointing to the Russian threat," Gerasimov said. "On the whole, if we assess the current European security system, we will see that it does not live up to the changing international relations anymore," the Russian chief of general staff added.

According to him, enmity, pressure and sanctions are not the best tools to ensure security. "The new European security system, which would be in everybody’s interest, can only be set up through joint efforts involving all European states," Gerasimov concluded.

The 6th Moscow Conference on International Security, organized by the Defense Ministry, is held on April 26-27. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and the top officials of the Russian Security Council and the Russian Foreign Ministry will present at conference their vision of the situation in the world and the reasons due to which the international situation has become less stable.

More than 700 guests take part in the conference: defense ministers and delegations of defense agencies, representatives of the expert and academic communities from 85 countries, as well as the senior officials of the UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).