Russia suspends its mission to NATO
Russia is suspending the work of its mission to NATO, said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The activities of the military mission of the alliance and its information bureau will be suspended in Moscow. This is a response to the reduction of Russia’s mission to NATO. The media have previously announced just such a response.
“In response to NATO’s actions, we suspend the work of our permanent representative to NATO, including the work of the chief military representative. Probably from November 1 – or it will take a few more days, ”Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow.
“Secondly, we suspend the activities of the NATO military liaison mission in Moscow, the accreditation of its employees is revoked from November 1 this year,” the minister continued (quotes from Interfax). established at the Embassy of the Kingdom of Belgium “.
On October 6, the NATO leadership decided to halve the Russian mission in the organization – to expel eight diplomats and abolish two more positions. Before that, the number of the Russian permanent mission was 20 people – thus, it should be up to 10 diplomatic staff.
A NATO spokesman said at the time that eight mission staff members had been stripped of their accreditation.
The next day, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the expelled officers “undeclared members of Russian intelligence.”
“We revoked the accreditation of eight members of the Russian mission to NATO, who were undeclared members of Russian intelligence. …
Sky News also claimed that NATO is cutting Russia’s mission to the alliance in half in response to alleged hostile activities by Russia.
Expected response
“Kommersant” citing its sources wrotethat Russia could close its permanent mission to NATO in retaliation for the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats from Brussels.
The interlocutors also admit that the retaliatory measures will affect the NATO military liaison mission in Moscow, which was created in 2002 and operates under the auspices of the Belgian embassy. Its employees are endowed with diplomatic immunity. The NATO website says that the mission consists of 13 people, but according to Kommersant, in reality there are “at least half that number.”
“If NATO has any urgent matters, they can contact our ambassador in Belgium on these issues. Ambassador ensuring bilateral relations,” Lavrov said on Monday.
The message on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry says that “at the discretion of the alliance,” one of the ambassadors of NATO member states in Moscow can perform similar functions. “
NATO takes note of Lavrov’s mutual closure of diplomatic missions, but has not yet received official notifications from Moscow, TASS reports with a protocol from the Alliance’s press service.
The NATO Mission in Moscow provides liaison between the military committee of the alliance in Brussels and the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Military cooperation between Russia and NATO was frozen in April 2014 at the initiative of the alliance, which thus reacted to the annexation of Crimea.
Russia and NATO
The Russian diplomatic mission to NATO was established in 1998. In May 2002, the Russia-NATO Council was established. With the participation of these bodies, several agreements on military-technical cooperation and joint exercises were signed.
The alliance relationship and began to talk about Russia between the two types of war in Georgia.
In March 2014, Russia’s relations with NATO escalated again after the annexation of Crimea. The alliance curtailed all forms of civil and military cooperation with Russia in September 2014. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, Russia was not invited to a NATO summit. The number of the permanent mission of Russia to the alliance began to decline sharply.
In 2018, the next permanent representative of Russia to NATO, Alexander Grushko, was relieved of his post.
At the end of March 2018, Stoltenbergil about the expulsion of seven employees of the Russian mission to NATO and the refusal of accreditation for three more. Prior to that, more than 20 countries announced the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats as a sign of solidarity with Britain in the case of the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
Pavel Aksenov, BBC correspondent:
“Ten years ago, in June 2011, before the NATO-Russia Council meeting at the ministry of defense level, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogmussen announced that the most important achievement of this meeting was the fact that they stopped seeing each other as a threat.
Then the parties prepared a document – “Joint Review of the Common Security Threats of the XXI Century”. Neither Brussels nor Moscow was in it. This was the moment when the parties discussed not only issues that irritated Moscow (expansion of the alliance and European missile defense), but also military aviation.
Ten years later, the relationship between the parties collapsed to almost zero.
A strong deterioration in relations between NATO and Russia occurred after 2014 – then Brussels completely froze military cooperation, leaving only a diplomatic channel. They improved slightly in 2016, when the practice of council meetings at the level of permanent representatives was resumed – it was necessary to solve urgent problems of the situation in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
However, mutual claims not only did not disappear, they only worsened. In the new strategy of the alliance until 2030, presented in December 2020, in particular, it is said that Russia illegally and illegally annexed Crimea, invaded and occupied part of eastern Ukraine, continues to occupy part of the internationally recognized territory of Georgia and hinder the rapprochement of Georgia and Ukraine with NATO, increases forces in the Baltic Sea, in the Black Sea and in the Arctic, and in general “is seeking hegemony in their possessions of the Soviet period.”
Russia’s attitude towards the Alliance is no better. The parties conduct exercises in which they practice combat operations against each other, military aircraft are constantly flying near the borders. In the end, this confrontation led to the suspension of diplomatic relations.
According to international experts, channels of direct communication between states by military alliances are important, firstly, to prevent the escalation of conflicts. While preparing for war and considering any steps in context. That is why, until recently, it was very important for the parties to maintain at least some contacts. “