The September Summit of NATO will be held without Russia's participation

Russian diplomats did not receive an invitation to the September Summit of NATO, at which the relations of the alliance with Russia will be discussed, Kommersant reports with reference to sources in the diplomatic districts and headquarters of NATO.

At the summit, which will be held on September 4-5 in Wales, among other things, NATO will be discussed to strengthen collective defense, increase military spending, relations with Russia and strengthen ties with Ukraine, as well as withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. As the alliance commander says, "the NATO summit will gather at a critical moment in history, when global security becomes more unstable, as the actions of Russia in Ukraine showed."

All key topics are somehow connected with Russia, the publication notes, but there will be no diplomats from Moscow to Wales. As the sources at the headquarters of the alliance explained, the participation of the Russian delegation in the September summit is recognized as "inappropriate."

Sources in Russian diplomatic circles, in turn, noted that they did not expect invitations, and recalled that back in April in NATO they decided to turn off cooperation with Moscow. “It was not our initiative, we were ready to continue joint work. It is a pity that important projects were frozen. Now the ball is on the side of the alliance - we will not beg,” one of the sources explained.

In Moscow, they count on improving relations with NATO after the post of Secretary General of the Alliance Anders Fogg Rasmussen, who repeatedly convicted Russia to aggression against Ukraine, will be replaced by former Norway Prime Ministers Jens Stoltenberg.

The decision on the suspension of practical military and civil cooperation with Russia was made at a meeting of the heads of the Foreign Ministry of the NATO participating countries on April 1. At the same time, the decision noted that "the political dialogue in the Council of NATO-Russia, as well as at the embassy level and above, may continue as necessary to exchange views, primarily about the Ukrainian crisis." Two days later, Russia withdrew its representative at NATO Colonel General Valery Evnevich.