No positive agenda has so far emerged in Russia-NATO relations, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov said in an interview with TASS on Thursday, Trend reports referring to TASS.
According to the high-ranking diplomat, during last year’s massive expulsion of Russian diplomats from the European Union member-states, the Russian representative office in the North Atlantic Alliance was the only diplomatic mission, where the number of staff members was radically reduced without a possibility of being restored. "Well, practice shows that so far no positive agenda has emerged over this time in our relations with the alliance."
Chizhov noted that not all EU countries have chosen this "slippery path."
"In most cases, when the decisions on expulsions were announced, formally the door was not closed for replacing these posts in the future," he said.
In March 2018, NATO reduced Russia’s diplomatic mission from 30 to 20 staff members in connection with the poisoning case of former Russian military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the British city of Salisbury. In April 2015, the number of staff members of Russia’s mission to the organization was cut from more than 50 to 30 as part of measures in response to Crimea’s reunification with Russia.
According to London, Sergei Skripal, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury on March 4, 2018. Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London rushed to accuse Russia of being involved in the incident. Moscow rejected all of the United Kingdom’s accusations, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia ever had any program aimed at developing such a substance.