Russia says still ready to work with NATO on equal basis amid strained ties

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Moscow is still ready to work with NATO "on an equal basis" even as the bloc is ramping up its military presence in eastern Europe.

"We are open to dialogue, but our only condition is that the dialogue should be mutually respectful and take into account each other's interests," the ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a weekly briefing.

Yet she added that it was too early to speak about full-fledged cooperation between Moscow and the military alliance.

She recalled the most recent attempt to restore the relations took place in April in Brussels during a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council (NRC) at the level of permanent representatives with the aim to discuss the "essence of mutual concerns," but the meeting ended up with profound disagreements between the two parties.

The cooperation within the NRC, established in 2002, was suspended in April in 2014 following their soured ties over the Ukraine crisis.

The Russian side said Moscow would continue to consider the NRC a "useful channel for holding consultations between NATO and Russia on key security issues."

Zakharova voiced Moscow's concerns over the risks to international security and strategic stability that are created by the unilateral and unrestricted deployment of the U.S. strategic missile defense system in Europe.

"Moscow considers the deployment of the NATO missile system in Europe as a direct threat to regional and international stability and therefore retains the right to adopt responsive measures of military and technical nature," said the spokeswoman.

(APD)