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The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, described as lies the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) statements that her country refuses to engage in dialogue.
In a meeting with the press, the spokeswoman said that the statements of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg 'are not true; this is a lie," she clarified.
She explained that Moscow agreed to engage in a substantive conversation "without getting into a politicized public relations story, for which our Western partners are so renowned."
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She said that the Russian side proposed establishing a dialogue on broad issues between experts, with the participation of military personnel, and warned that such proposals are "on Mr. Stoltenberg's table."
On Wednesday, the NATO secretary-general told reporters that the alliance regrets that not a single meeting of the Russia-NATO Council has been held since the summer of 2019 because, according to him, Moscow did not agree to the invitation to convene it.
Zakharova expressed that her country will take into account NATO's current confrontational attitude in its foreign policy and military planning.
She considered that the results of the recent meeting of the NATO countries' foreign ministers "did not bring any surprises, once again the inability to give meaning to the future existence of the alliance and to formulate a positive agenda."
�� #Zakharova: On March 24, 1999, #NATO started bombing #Yugoslavia in violation of the principles of international law sealed in the ���� @UN Charter.
— MFA Russia ���� (@mfa_russia) March 26, 2021
☝️ The issue of @NATO’s responsibility for damaging international relations and the country in question has not been settled. pic.twitter.com/V55vqNOch9
The spokeswoman commented that the participants in the meeting agreed on the need to continue to consider Russia as the main challenge to the West's security.
"Neither pandemic, nor infodemic, nor international terrorism, nor migration problems, nor phenomena of the economic and financial crisis in the space of its own states, nothing was presented by the alliance," the spokeswoman stressed.
In her opinion, NATO "continues to justify increased funding for its actions" under the pretext of Moscow's mythical aggression.
She denounced that the Atlantic Alliance has been increasing its military potential as never before since the Cold War, especially, she said, on what they call its "Eastern flank."
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