NATO Secretary General said that trust between the West and Russia has been destroyed

NATO Director General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that the West has tried to build bridges with Russia since the end of the Cold War, but any trust created in recent years has been destroyed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“For decades, NATO has sought to develop a better, more constructive relationship with Russia,” Hadley Gamble told CNBC’s Brussels correspondent.

After the end of the Cold War, we created institutions [like the] NATO-Russia Council, when I was Prime Minister of Norway, I remember President Putin attending NATO summits… So this was a different time when we worked for a better relationship. “Russia has given up on all this,” he said.

Stoltenberg said the level of trust created during the rapprochement between Western countries and Russia in recent decades had been destroyed by Moscow’s decision to invade Ukraine.

“Even if the fighting ends, we will not return to some kind of normal, friendly relationship with Russia. Trust has been destroyed,” he said. I think the war had long-term consequences for the relationship with Russia.”

Stoltenberg’s comments come as the war in Ukraine shows no signs of slowing down over the winter period, despite expectations among some Western analysts that both Ukraine and Russia may seek a lull in the fighting to regroup before launching new counteroffensives in the spring.

However, this does not appear to be the case, with fighting intensifying in eastern Ukraine and missile and drone strikes continuing to harass Ukrainian villages and cities in the south and east of the country.

Russia continues to bomb energy infrastructure in Ukraine, too, with disastrous consequences for civilians; Drone strikes on Saturday knocked out power for 1.5 million people in the port city of Odessa, for example.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had indicated last week that he had been involved in it for a long time, saying that the so-called “special military operation” could be a “long operation”. Russia insists its aim is to “liberate” regions (Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and Kherson and Zaporizhia in the south) that it unilaterally and illegally “annexed” after forced referendums on joining Russia.

Ukraine also shows no signs of backing down, particularly as it tries to build on the momentum that has allowed it to liberate parts of Kharkiv in the northeast and Kherson in the south and make progress in the east – despite the war there, particularly in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, seen It was hell for both sides as both powers dug in networks of trenches that now stretch across a ruined landscape reminiscent of the First World War.

Stoltenberg insisted that the war could stop at any moment if Russia chose to end hostilities.

“that they [Russia] They can do as many other European countries have done since the end of World War II, they can choose peace, choose cooperation, choose trust in their neighbors instead of always being aggressive and threatening to neighbors as Russia has done over and over again against Georgia, against Ukraine.”