MOSCOW, July 15. /TASS/. The terrorist attack in the French southern city of Nice has demonstrated where real and main challenges for Europe come from, a senior specialist from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Europe told Tass on Friday.

Dmitry Danilov, the head of the institute’s department for European security, recalled confrontational rhetoric heard at the recent NATO summit in Warsaw and a session of the Russia-NATO Council in Brussels, where Russia was dubbed as a threat to European security.

"Just several days after the NATO summit and the Russia-NATO Council, an awful terrorist attack in Nice comes," Danilov said. The attack "has clearly demonstrated where real and main threats and challenges for Europe come from," he added.

He said these actions by West’s elites showed they awere ready "to trade concrete and absolutely necessary projects of cooperation for political goals stemming from group and political interests".

However, "cooperation of security services continues, and we can see examples when in this difficult situation in political relations of Russia and the West, Russian security services have supplied certain information to European partners, helping to avert terrorist acts," he went on.

"However, this is insufficient," the expert said, noting that this cooperation should be put on the systemic grounding.

"If a potentially hostile Moscow, potentially hostile policy of Russia and possible aggression is mentioned constantly, this political atmosphere will make it impossible to efficiently develop cooperation mechanisms," Danilov said.

"It is now necessary to take this very problem to a political level, possibly this will give a chance to start discussion on the issue and reassess threats to security in Europe," Danilov added.

On Thursday evening, a lorry ploughed through a crowd during Bastille Day celebrations on the Promenade des Anglais in the southern city of Nice. According to latest reports, 84 people were killed in the attack and dozens were injured, 18 people are in critical condition. The driver was shot dead by police.