MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/. Moscow calls on NATO to establish regular contacts between military experts in the framework of the Russia-NATO Council (RNC), Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with German newspaper Rheinische Post.

"We proceed from the assumption that in order to prevent negative tendencies, top officials from leading NATO member countries need to reconsider their current approaches to building relations with Russia. It is necessary to establish regular contact between military experts in the RNC," Lavrov said.

Russia put forward "concrete proposals for decreasing a military threat and preventing unintended incidents," he added. "We are now waiting for NATO's response," the foreign minister noted.

Lavrov reminded that it was not Russia's fault that RNC's work at the high and highest level was suspended. "NATO made a decision to completely stop practical cooperation and transition to military-political deterrence of Russia. I will remind you that it happened in 2014, when the West was near-sighted in supporting the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine, and then pretended not to notice Kiev's military campaign against Donbass residents," he said.

The initiative on normalizing relations, including in the framework of prospects for resuming the work of RNC at the highest level, should come from NATO, Lavrov noted. "From our side, we are ready to go as far as our colleagues will reciprocate," he concluded.