The Alliance’s inadequate reaction to the events in South Ossetia, its reluctance to pursue equal dialogue in the NATO-Russia Council and attempts to justify Saakashvili regime’s war crimes make it impossible to conduct business as usual in the framework of the Council.

As a result the Russian side is compelled to state that the above mentioned steps of the Alliance create an obstacle to developing relations between NATO and Russia, put the things upside-down, when the victim becomes the aggressor, and the cooperation with the Alliance falls victim to odious political aims pursued by certain NATO member-states to the detriment of common security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.

In its first response Russia suspends cooperation with the Alliance in several areas and under ongoing projects of the NRC. Refraining from stopping political dialogue in the framework of the NRC, we temporarily “freeze” military-to-military cooperation, including suspending Russia’s participation in joint exercises, in exchanges of military delegations and the logistic cooperation. The high-level visits of NATO officials to the Russian Federation will be postponed, as well as the visits of ships of NATO, standing naval task forces and of NATO member-states to Russian ports. In addition we postpone for the time being the visit of NATO Secretary General to Moscow, suspend the implementation of SOFA as well as freeze the activities of the NRC Working Group on Peacekeeping and the negotiations on the draft Agreement on using Russian military air transport in the interests of NATO. The format of our interaction in the framework of the “third dimension” will be reconsidered. Besides, after Alliance’s refusal to transform the NATO Information Centre in Moscow into the NRC Information Centre, Russia considers its functioning irrelevant.

At the same time Russia, remaining committed to ensuring security in the Euroatlantic area, is ready to continue cooperation with the Alliance in fighting international terrorism, drug trafficking, civil emergency planning and arms control.

However, Russia reserves the right to take further decisions with regard to scaling-down its cooperation with the Alliance if it continues to apply double standards in assessing the causes and consequences of Georgian aggression against South Ossetia and build up military cooperation with Georgian leadership which committed criminal acts.

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