Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

NATO Seeks to Allay Concerns at Meeting with Russia

NATO Seeks to Allay Concerns at Meeting with Russia

BRUSSELS - NATO will seek to reassure Russia on Monday that its troop deployments to the Baltics and Poland next year are purely defensive, in a rare meeting of the alliance's envoys with those of the Kremlin that is unlikely to resolve long-standing grievances.
The NATO-Russia Council, the forum bringing together North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ambassadors and Russia's top diplomat dealing with the U.S.-led alliance, will convene for only the third time this year with the crisis in Ukraine still the top concern for Brussels and Washington.
Russia says it is concerned about a NATO military build-up near its borders. "We count on having a frank discussion about the security situation in Europe ... including ... the consequences of NATO reinforcements on the eastern flank," Russia's ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, said on Friday.
With relations already at a low ebb, Russia's devastating bombing campaign in Aleppo, which is not expected to be formerly discussed, has provided a dark backdrop for the meeting, diplomats said.
However, NATO allies, particularly Germany, have been pushing for a meeting with Grushko to explain why they are sending four multinational battalions of up to 4,000 troops to the former Soviet states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland from early 2017.  (Reuters)