Russia’s foreign minister said Monday that the country is suspending its mission to NATO, News Nation USA reports.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the move is in response to last week’s expulsion by NATO of eight members of Russia’s mission to the military alliance.
NATO said they were secretly working as intelligence officers and halved the size of Moscow’s team able to work at its headquarters.
Lavrov also announced that NATO’s military liaison and information offices in Moscow would be closed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks on the side of the meeting dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the House of Russian Diaspora named after Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Moscow, Russia on Monday.
“As a result of NATO’s deliberate moves, we have practically no conditions for elementary diplomatic work and in response to NATO’s actions we suspend the work of our permanent mission to NATO, including the work of the chief military envoy, probably from Nov. 1. Or it may take several more days,” Lavrov said.
He also said contact between the Western alliance and Moscow could be done through the Russian embassy in Belgium. The Russian mission isn’t based at NATO’s headquarters, but in a leafy neighborhood in the south of the Belgian capital, Brussels.
NATO suspended practical cooperation with Russia in 2014 after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, but has kept channels open for high-level meetings and for military-to-military cooperation. But the NATO-Russia Council, their preferred forum, has only met sporadically since then.
