U.S. President Joe Biden's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin serves NATO's interests, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said  after talks with Prime Minister of Lithuania Ingrida Šimonytė.

"I'm looking forward to welcoming President Biden to Brussels in a couple of weeks’ time. I'm absolutely confident that when we meet we will discuss a wide range of issues including NATO's relationship with Russia...Then I welcome that Biden, after his meeting with the NATO leaders, will travel on, and meet with the President Putin. And the meeting between President Biden and President Putin, that is in line with NATO's dual track approach to Russia. We need deterrence and defense, but also dialogue when it comes to Russia," he said.

Stoltenberg noted that NATO countries "need to strive for a better relationship with Russia". "Russia is our neighbor, and we need to strive for reducing tensions and improving the relationship. But even if we don't believe in a better relationship in the foreseeable future, we need to talk to Russia, because we need to manage a difficult relationship," he stressed.

The NATO Secretary General stated that the NATO Russia relationship is at the lowest point since the end of the Cold War. "We need to prevent incidents and accidents, miscalculations, misunderstanding, and therefore, military lines of communications, transparency, predictability is important, especially when the relationship is difficult as it is now. And of course President Biden's meeting with President Putin is part of this dialogue with Russia," Stoltenberg concluded.

Source - vesnikkavkaza.net

04 June 2021 / 10:49