MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/. The European Union is ready to return to a strategic partnership with Russia and look into all possible fields for cooperation, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said on Monday.
"The EU and Russia were working on the prospective of a strategic partnership, we would like to go back that kind of situation," the foreign policy chief told a news conference after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
"We are ready to explore all possible fields of cooperation on the basis of a pragmatic assessment of our respective interests and on many fields these respective interests coincide both bilaterally, regionally and globally," she added.
Anti-Russian sanctions ‘not an objective in themselves’
The sanctions Brussels imposed on Russia are part of a policy aimed to end the conflict in Ukraine, the EU foreign policy chief said.
"Our sanctions are not an objective in themselves and we’ve always said consistently and jointly, as the European Union, with all the 28 member states, that we see this only as one part of a policy, whose aim is to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine with the full implementation of the Minsk agreements," Mogherini said.