BERLIN, January 17. /TASS/. Former NATO Secretary General (in office from 2014 to 2024) Jens Stoltenberg has called on Western countries to "talk to Russia as a neighbor."

"We need to discuss ending the fighting in Ukraine with Russia just as we, the United States, and other countries are doing. <...> We need to talk to Russia as a neighbor," he said in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine.

A return to dialogue with Russia is necessary, among other things, for the discussion of arms control, Stoltenberg noted. "Even during the Cold War, we managed to limit nuclear weapons, but that architecture no longer exists," he said.