NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said he has personally asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to release Ukrainian naval vessels and its crews that were captured by Russians near the Kerch Strait in November 2018.
“We discussed Ukraine, and I expressed NATO’s stance, which is well known: we do not accept the illegal annexation of Crimea and urge Russia to stop destabilizing Donbas in the east of Ukraine. And I also said that we call on Russia to free the naval sailors and vessels that were captured in the Kerch Strait not so long ago,” Stoltenberg told reporters on Feb. 15 upon his meeting with Lavrov on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
The NATO secretary general said he considers the current situation to be “very difficult, especially for people in Ukraine.” “At the same time, we must continue to discuss all the issues with Russia, not only the Ukrainian one. Russia is our neighbor and it has violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our neighbors, in particular, Ukraine,” Stoltenberg stressed.
In addition, during their meeting, the parties discussed Russia’s violation of the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (the INF Treaty), the situation in Afghanistan and the need for a dialogue, in which issues of transparency, risk reduction, and exchange of information about exercises can be discussed.
