Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that his country wants to develop a normal partnership based on mutual respect with the NATO alliance.
"Our fundamental position is that we want a normal partnership with NATO, one based on mutual respect and mutual benefit," Lavrov said after a meeting with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski.
His remarks came just hours after Russia expelled two Canadian diplomats working as representatives of the NATO in Moscow in a tit-for-tat move after the western military alliance expelled two Russian diplomats on suspicion of spying.
A statement from the Russian foreign ministry released earlier in the day said it was forced to revoke the diplomatic accreditation to the two NATO staff "in response to an unfriendly act by NATO against Russian envoys."
The expulsion of the Russian diplomats by the NATO alliance was connected with the conviction of an Estonian high-ranking former defense ministry official in February for passing on Estonian and NATO military secrets to foreign agents.
Earlier, NATO had frozen the talks with Russia following the Russia-Georgia war in August after Moscow responded aggressively to a Georgian move to bring about constitutional order in the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force. However, NATO members agreed in December to gradually resume political contacts with Russia.
Expulsion of the two Canadian envoys came a day after Russia withdrew from a scheduled NATO-Russia Council meeting later this month, protesting against the on-going month-long military exercises of the alliance in Georgia and the expulsion of the two Russian diplomats.
NATO began military exercises in Georgia on Wednesday, despite strong objections from Moscow. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had earlier denounced the planned NATO military exercises in Georgia, saying that such "muscle-flexing" decisions would adversely affect the resumption of full-fledged contacts between Russia and NATO.
However, NATO's central military command insists that the exercises, which involves 1,300 troops from 19 countries including NATO member states, would be non-aggressive and based on a fictitious UN-mandated, NATO-led crisis response operation.
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June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.