Russia-NATO relations to remain at low level if NATO does not change position towards Russia

MOSCOW, June 30. /TASS/. If NATO does not change its stance on cooperation with Russia in the field of common threats and challenges, the prospects for restoring collaboration between the two sides to previous levels will look bleak then, Russia’s ambassador to NATO Alexander Grushko said on Tuesday in the course of a Moscow-Brussels televised bridge. "The quality of our relationship was determined by the ability to rebuff the new threats and challenges together and the essence of activity of the Russia-NATO Council arose from it to a big degree, too," he said. "We’ve done a lot of joint work on Afghanistan and we had a very successful project in training cadres for the Afghan, Pakistani and Central Asian drugs control and anti-trafficking agencies," Grushko said. "We took an active part in struggle with piracy," he recalled. "We were ready to exchange assessments of threats coming from new terrorist groupings but this channel of communications was blocked in full." "If NATO doesn’t revise its stance on the prospects for pooling efforts in a joint struggle with common threats and challenges, the prospect for a general restoration of relations to previous levels is nowhere in sight then," he said. Read more