© Yasser Al-Zayat/AFP via Getty ImagesJens Stoltenberg said he is willing to meet Vladimir Putin
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he is willing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin,
potentially paving the way for the first high-level talks between the world's most powerful military alliance and Moscow in several years.
"If the context is right, I am, of course, also ready to meet with President Putin," Stoltenberg
told DPA news agency in an interview published Monday, stressing that dialogue is important "especially when things are difficult."
Stoltenberg's offer for talks comes as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, founded in 1949, is struggling to reconcile conflicts between its 29 members on issues ranging from military action in Syria to defense spending to how to deal with Russia.
It follows calls by French President Emmanuel Macron for the West to rethink its relationships with the Kremlin, which have been strained since Moscow invaded and annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014.
"Russia is our biggest neighbor, Russia is here to stay, and we need to strive for a better relationship with Russia," NATO's Stoltenberg told DPA. "But even without an improved relationship with Russia, we need to manage a difficult relationship with Russia."
The idea of a softer stance on Moscow has alarmed some NATO members, particularly those who spent decades in the Soviet sphere of influence.
Comment: The final sentence gets close to the heart of the matter. The probable source of the endemic anti-Russian sentiment these days isn't any alleged wrongdoing committed by Russia. Crimea, the Skripals, Magnitsky, Syria, etc., are all smokescreens. The root reason is simply old attitudes held by old men and women approaching senility and stuck in a Cold War mentality that has been running on inertia for the past 30 years. And it's not just the countries who "spent decades in the Soviet sphere of influence". It's all the Cold Warriors outside that sphere of influence that are only too happy to keep the spirit alive.