The bilateral relations between Russia and NATO will not return to normal even after the end of the Ukraine conflict, since the parties have already passed a point of no return, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th February, 2023) The bilateral relations between Russia and NATO will not return to normal even after the end of the Ukraine conflict, since the parties have already passed a point of no return, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday.
"The end of this war will not be a return to normal in our relations with Russia, there is no going back," Stoltenberg said at the SAMAK Nordic Summit in Helsinki, a forum for the leaders of the Social Democratic parties and trade unions of the Northern European states.
Ties between Russia and NATO remained strained even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The growing tensions between the parties were mainly driven by NATO's eastward expansion and the inclusion of new states in the military alliance despite Russia's warnings that such steps directly threaten the country's national security.
Bilateral relations reached an impasse in 2014, following the events in Ukraine and the accession of Crimea to Russia. At that point, NATO announced the suspension of civil and military cooperation with Moscow, while Russia approved a new edition of its military doctrine, in which the build-up of NATO's military potential and its expansion towards Russian borders were declared one of the key military threats to the country.
The new significant deterioration in relations took place in late 2021, when NATO started boosting its eastern flank along the borders with Russia and Belarus by dispatching additional troops and sending Western instructors to Donbas. In response to Moscow launching a military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, NATO further reinforced the flank by sending more ships, planes and ground troops to the region and putting them on high alert. These events marked the highest point in tensions in the relations between the parties.
