NEWPORT, September 04. /ITAR-TASS/. NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Thursday aired a pessimistic tonality as he spoke about President Vladimir Putin’s peace plan for Ukraine at a NATO expanded summit in Wales.

He referred to it as “the so-called peace plan” and repeated a yet another time the Western allegations that “Russia is attacking Ukraine.”

“Let me stress we welcome all efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine,” Rasmussen said. “What counts is what is actually happening on the ground,”

He claimed that NATO was still witnessing “Russian involvement destabilizing the situation in Ukraine.”

“So we continue to call on Russia to pull back its troops from Ukrainian borders, stop the flow of weapons and fighters into Ukraine, stop the support for armed militants in Ukraine and engage in a constructive political process,” Rasmussen said. “That would be a genuine effort to facilitate a peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine."

This would be a genuine effort to facilitate a peaceful solution, he claimed.

Rasmussen also alleged that Russia had violated “the fundamental principles of the NATO-Russia Founding Act”, which the two sides signed in 1997.

He still admitted the importance of keeping diplomatic channels in communications with Russia open and pledged NATO’s willingness to keep its “response” in full accordance with the Founding Act.

Wednesday, a peace plan consisting of seven points was published at the Kremlin’s official website. It includes provisions like the ending of active offensive operations on both sides in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, withdrawal of Ukrainian armed units to a distance that would make the shelling of populated localities impossible, a full and objective international monitoring of the ceasefire, ruling out of the use of military aircraft against civilians and populated areas, exchanges of the individuals detained by force on an “all for all” basis, opening of corridors for refugees and for deliveries of humanitarian aid, and the setting up of conditions for repair works in the population centers affected by combat actions.

Friday, representatives of the Ukrainian government and of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics are expected to meet in the Belarusian capital Minsk for talks that many hope to bring about a breakthrough in the dragged-out East-Ukrainian crisis.