Russia announced this Monday (18) the closure of representation at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well as the alliance’s military liaison and information offices in Moscow, in response to the banning of eight Russian diplomats.
The measures were announced during a press conference by the country’s foreign minister, Serguey Lavrov, after a meeting with Guinea-Bissau’s foreign minister, Suzi Carla Barbosa.
“In response to NATO’s actions, we have suspended our representation activities in the alliance, including the work of our main military representative, as of November 1,” the Russian government official said.
In addition, Lavrov reported the closure of the NATO military liaison mission office in Moscow and that “the accreditation of officials will be revoked from 1 November.” “The NATO information office in Moscow, which is headquartered at the Belgian Embassy, will also be closed,” added the minister.
Lavrov claimed that NATO earlier this month withdrew the credentials of eight Russian diplomats “without giving an official explanation” of the decision, although days earlier, the alliance’s general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, had indicated an interest in normalizing relations with Russia.
The Russian chancellor explained that, in recent years, the country’s representation in NATO has been reduced on two occasions and the level of dialogue and collaboration has dropped to minimal levels.
“All of this confirms that NATO is not interested in any dialogue on equal rights, nor in any joint work. Thus, we do not see the need to continue acting as if a change were possible in the future, because NATO has already declared the impossibility of these changes”, concluded Lavrov.
NATO had expelled eight Russian diplomats for allegedly being spies (undeclared Russian secret service agents) and had also reduced the total number of diplomats the country could accredit in the alliance to ten.