Russia is speeding up to sever any ties with NATO. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced this Monday that it will close its representation before the Atlantic Alliance, in Brussels. The measure is Moscow’s response to the expulsion of eight of its diplomats accredited to the organization accused of espionage. When the latent tensions between Russia and NATO do not cease, Foreign Affairs has also decided to withdraw the visa to the personnel of the Alliance mission in Moscow. “If NATO members have an urgent matter, they can contact our ambassador in Belgium,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference.
On October 6, the military alliance ordered the expulsion of eight diplomats from the Russian representation to NATO for being “undeclared intelligence officers.” Russia denies the accusations and assures that the Alliance’s measure undermines the prospects for normalization in relations with the military organization of which the United States, a large part of the European countries and Turkey are members.
The step that the Kremlin has taken this Monday shows the deterioration of ties between the government of Vladimir Putin and the body led by Jens Stoltenberg. There were 10 officers in the diplomatic mission to the Alliance, based in Brussels. The expulsion of diplomats from the Alliance’s information office and liaison mission in Moscow – which housed the Belgian Embassy – decreed by Russia further undermines the capacity for diplomatic dialogue between the former enemies of the Cold War. NATO has remarked on Monday that it has not yet received notification from Russia about the latest measures but that it “takes note” of Lavrov’s words released by the media, Reuters reports.
The Russian Foreign Ministry assures that the reprisals, which will take effect on November 1, are due to the “hostile actions” of the Atlantic Alliance. “NATO is not interested in equitable dialogue and joint work,” Lavrov assured this Monday. “If that’s the case, then we don’t see the need to continue pretending that changes in the foreseeable future are possible,” he added.
The Atlantic military bloc suspended practical cooperation with Russia in 2014, following the annexation of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in a referendum deemed illegal by the international community, and their relationship was further affected by the Kremlin’s political and military support for the separatists. pro-Russians in the Donbas conflict in Ukraine. However, some ties and communication channels remained, which have been broken by the latest tensions.
The latest this spring, when Russia deployed tens of thousands of military personnel along the borders with Ukraine in response to what it called “provocative actions” by NATO near its borders. The deployment put the Alliance and the EU on alert.
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Russian military activity in that area and in the Black Sea, moreover, has not stopped. In June, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that it had fired a warning shot at a British destroyer sailing through the Black Sea, the first time since the Cold War that Russia used live ammunition to deter a NATO ship. This Monday, more than 40 ships – including the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet – have participated in large-scale maneuvers in the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine.
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