MOSCOW. March 17 (Interfax) - Full-fledged dialogue between Russia and NATO will hopefully be restored in the future, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in an interview with the Kazakh news website tengrinews.kz.
"I hope that full-fledged dialogue, I stress the word full-fledged, and equal dialogue, the work of the NATO-Russia Council will be restored one day," Shoigu said.
In April 2014, NATO unilaterally froze its political and military dialogue with Russia over the situation in Ukraine and Crimea. However, there have been contacts between Russia and NATO military officials since then.
The NATO secretary general's annual report published on Tuesday said that in 2020, the alliance remained open to dialogue within the NATO-Russia Council to discuss international security and to increase transparency and predictability.