The meeting of the Russia-NATO Council will begin in Brussels on January 12 at 10:00 (12:00 Moscow time). The negotiations are planned to last about three hours. Following the meeting of the Council, which will be held at NATO headquarters, the secretary general of the alliance plans to give a press conference.
“On Wednesday, January 12, a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council will take place at NATO headquarters. After the talks, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will speak to the media as chairman of the Russia-NATO Council. The meeting of the Council will begin at 10.00. Around 1.30 pm – NATO Secretary General’s press conference, ”NATO said in a January 5 statement.
A day earlier, NATO confirmed the holding of a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council on 12 January. The alliance stressed that “the dialogue with Russia should be conducted on the basis of reciprocity and respond to NATO’s concerns about Russian actions.”
On January 4, State Department spokesman Ned Price announced that the US delegation to talks with Russia in Geneva on security guarantees will be led by First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. The Russian delegation will be headed by the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Ryabkov.
On December 28, Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev told Izvestia that the effectiveness of the Russia-NATO Council meeting depends on whether all members of the alliance and Moscow will talk on equal terms.
On December 17, the Russian Foreign Ministry published draft agreements between Russia and the United States and NATO on security guarantees. As follows from the documents, in particular, the alliance is proposed to abandon the conduct of any military activity on the territory of Ukraine and other states of Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia and Central Asia. According to a White House source, the US presidential administration found some of the proposals useful and others unacceptable.
Russian-American talks on strategic stability and security issues will take place on January 10. Thereafter, on January 12, the issue of European security and the situation in Ukraine will be discussed at a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council and on January 13 with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
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