NATO, Russian Ambassadors To Resume Talks On April 20
NATO ambassadors are set to resume talks with their Russian counterpart in Brussels on April 20, ending a nearly two-year hiatus that followed the forcible Russian annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
"The main purpose of the NATO-Russia Council tomorrow is to exchange views, is to be transparent, is to contribute to predictability and to discuss Ukraine," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on April 19.
Two incidents last week in which Russian warplanes buzzed a U.S. warship and performed what Washington called "erratic and aggressive maneuvers" near an American plane during a flight in international airspace underlines "the importance of open military lines of communications, of predictability and risk reduction," Stoltenberg said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned the "mistrust" between NATO and Russia will be challenging to overcome.
NATO suspended all practical cooperation with Moscow in April 2014 following Russia's military seizure of Crimea the previous month.
Since then the NATO-Russia Council has only met once, in June 2014, though Stoltenberg has met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on several occasions in recent years.
Based on reporting by dpa and Reuters
The Committee to Protect Journalists has weighed in on the story about an RFE/RL journalist who has been ordered not to leave the peninsula while he is being investigated by the Russia-backed authorities:
"We call on Russian security forces to stop harassing journalists in Crimea for their reporting and expressed opinions," said Nina Ognianova, the committee's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator.
"Russia has a record of equating criticism with extremism, and of using its broad laws to intimidate and silence the press."
We are now closing the live blog for today. Until we resume again tomorrow morning, you can keep up with all our other Ukraine coverage here.
And here's an update from our news desk on the state of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement in the Netherlands:
Dutch Parliament Defeats Motion To Scrap EU-Ukraine Deal
The Dutch parliament has defeated a motion calling for the country to pull out of a treaty establishing closer European Union ties with Ukraine.
The EU-Ukraine deal was rejected by a majority of voters in a nonbinding referendum earlier this month.
Seventy-five Dutch lawmakers voted against the motion -- brought by the Euroskeptic Socialist Party -- with 71 in favor in the 150-seat lower house.
On April 6, more than four million people, accounting for about 32 percent of some 12.8 million eligible voters, cast their ballots in a nonbinding referendum with 61 percent rejecting the pact with Kyiv.
The deal has already been ratified by 27 other EU states, and was being provisionally implemented even in the Netherlands after being approved last year by both houses of Parliament.
Based on reporting by AFP and Interfax
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