Russia-NATO Relationship Worsened, Missing Chance to Normalize

Yevgeny Volk / May 06, 2009

This past April saw signs that Russian-NATO relations, frozen in the wake of the Russian-Georgian August 2008 conflict, might start looking up. A diplomatic meeting in the Russia-NATO format even took place in Brussels. But parallel to this event the Russian news media unleashed an unprecedented campaign protesting the NATO  Cooperative Bow 09/Cooperative Lance 09 exercise that the Alliance is to hold in Georgia.

Moscow is carefully sidestepping the fact that the exercise is nothing but a staff game, with no combat forces attending. The Kremlin is deliberately ignoring the routine nature of the maneuvers to be joined by NATO countries and a few Russia’s CIS and CSTO partners (such as Armenia). Moscow deems it presently advantageous to continue demonizing NATO and playing up the anti-NATO card (more…)