Russia proceeds from the fact that the European Union will initiate the restoration of the traditional Russia-EU summits, according to spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, APA reports citing TASS.
"We regret to see that the European Union is not ready for dialogue with Russia. I would like to remind ... that Russia-EU summits were traditionally held twice a year, in total 32 meetings were held in this format. This format allowed not only to solve certain practical problems through negotiations but also to determine the strategic vector of relations, which, of course, met the interests of the residents of Russia and the EU countries," she said, adding "We proceed from the fact that the European Union will initiate the restoration of this format".
The diplomat added that the traditional format of the Russia-EU summits was frozen in Brussels in 2014 after an unconstitutional coup d'etat in Ukraine.
"For any political contacts, especially at the highest level, appropriate conditions must be created, one of them is the presence of political will for joint constructive work, but the signals that we have received recently from the European Union, unfortunately, testify to the absence of such attitude," Zakharova said.
The leaders of the 27 EU countries during the discussion on Russia that lasted until late Friday night could not agree on the proposal of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron to hold a summit between the Russian Federation and the EU. Instead, according to the final statement of the summit, the heads of state and governments of the European Union instructed the EU foreign service under the leadership of Josep Borrell to explore opportunities for dialogue with Russia on certain topics of interest to the European Union, as well as to work out options for introducing new sanctions against Russia, including economic ones, for countering the possible future activities of Russia, which they regard as harmful.
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