SOCHI, October 19. / TASS /. Russia has never initiated the deterioration of relations with NATO or any other country and believes that the Alliance should make the first move to improve relations, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated on Tuesday following a meeting with participants of the 18th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.
"Yes, we proceed from this fact. We have never initiated the deterioration of relations with NATO, the EU, any other Western country, or any other region across the world," the Russian top diplomat told TASS.
Lavrov recalled the events of August 2008 when the Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili "gave a criminal command to bomb Tskhinvali as well as the positions of peacekeepers, including Russian ones." "Moscow called for convening the Russia-NATO Council. Then, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice firmly refused, although when the Council was established, according to the NATO-Russia Founding Act, it was supposed to work in every condition, especially when such crisis situations emerge. This is just one example, a kind of a trigger, which laid the foundation to the current state of affairs between [Russia] and NATO," the top diplomat pointed out.
On Monday, Lavrov said that Russia would suspend the work of its permanent mission to NATO since early November following NATO’s move to withdraw accreditation of eight Russian envoys. Furthermore, the work NATO Military Liaison Mission in Moscow and the NATO Information Office in Moscow will be put on hold.
On October 6, NATO decided to reduce the size of the Russian mission to the Alliance from 20 to 10 people, while the accreditation of some eight diplomats had been withdrawn and two more vacancies had been abolished. NATO gave Russian envoys until late October to leave Brussels.