NATO wants "constructive relations" with Russia, said secretary general Jens Stoltenberg ahead of a high profile summit taking place next month in Warsaw. "We follow our international commitments and the Russia-NATO Founding Act. We are no longer in the state of Cold War," he told German newspaper Der Spiegel on Saturday.
Formal ties between NATO and Russia were suspended after the invasion of Crimea in February 2014, but the NATO-Russia Council met this April for the first time in two years.
Georgia's prospective membership of NATO seems to be on hold, with European powers wary of offering an 'Article 5' security guarantee to Georgia given the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are Russian-backed self-declared republics on Georgia's sovereign territory since a war between Georgia and Russia in 2008.
SOURCE: commonspace.eu and agencies
PHOTO: Jens Stoltenberg