NATO and Russia have agreed to hold fresh talks next week, days after a major NATO summit in Poland where Moscow’s actions in Eastern Europe will be a major topic of discussion.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement that a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council will take place on July 13 at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, shortly after the NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8-9.
The Russian representative to NATO, Aleksandr Grushko, confirmed the planned meeting involving ambassadors from the alliance's 28 member states and Russia.
Stoltenberg said the council "has an important role to play as a forum for dialogue and information exchange, to reduce tensions and to increase predictability."
The NATO-Russia Council held in April its first meeting since June 2014.
Relations between NATO and Russia have reached their lowest point since the Cold War over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its role in the military conflict in eastern Ukraine.
