Norway: Russia-NATO relations are not "catastrophic" but simply non-existent - Lavrov

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Russia-NATO relations cannot be called catastrophic as they are non-existent, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday after talks with his Norwegian counterpart, Anniken Huitfeldt, in Tromso on Monday.

For relations to be “catastrophic you need to have something,” and Russia doesn’t “have any relations with NATO,” he said.

On October 18th, Lavrov announced that Russia would be suspending its mission to NATO from the 1st of November, after eight Russian diplomats were expelled from NATO’s Brussels office on spying allegations.

Monday’s meeting between Lavrov and Huitfeldt was the first since she was appointed Foreign Minister of Norway earlier in October. On Tuesday Lavrov will take part in the 18th Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC) Ministerial Meeting in Tromso.

SOT, Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister (Russian): “Norway is a member of NATO. NATO is not a friend of Russia. They decided they don’t want to be friendly, they decided they don’t want to have the founding act between NATO and Russia, to be the basis of our relations. They called out Russia and China, and actually Russia and China together, the threat to NATO. NATO is looking for the meaning of the future existence. My good friend Jens Stoltenberg, who used to be an excellent prime minister in Norway, is now saying that NATO must be responsible for the security all over the world: in the Pacific, you name it, Latin America. And of course we have these differences with our Norwegian neighbours, which we discussed. We discussed these differences frankly, openly. We today raised the issue of continuing consultations between our Ministries of Defence, between our Foreign Ministries. I invited the minister to visit Russia, whenever she believes it’s suitable. We also have channels of communications between the ministries of emergency on safe and rescue cooperation in this arctic region. Which is live. Quite a number of differences, they are from the area of ideology. Who is number one, who is rolling the world. This is what we hear from our NATO friends. We believe we have to concentrate on real life.”

SOT, Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister (Russian): “We don’t believe that we should discuss the gas situation. We don’t exploit gas deposits, we don’t sell gas for ministries. As for Russia-NATO relations, I wouldn’t say they are catastrophic. Because to be catastrophic you need to have something. We don’t have any relations with NATO, but we do have relations with Norway. On the security front as well as I mentioned. And we would like to raise them to the high level between the ministries of defence in addition to the security consultations which are regular.”

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Video ID: 20211025-053

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