OREANDA-NEWS. May 26, 2008. Bilateral consultations on European security were held in Kyiv on May 23 as previously arranged, with Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko and First Deputy Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Volodymyr Khandohy in attendance.

The sides discussed the state of and prospects for Russian and Ukrainian relations with NATO and exchanged their assessments of the outcomes of the summit of the alliance and other events in Bucharest from the viewpoint of their influence on security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic space.

The Russian side frankly voiced its concerns over the plans for Ukraine’s accession to the alliance and over the adverse implications of this process for the formation of a unified and indivisible pan-European system of security, for Russian-Ukrainian relations and for interaction within the framework of the Russia-NATO Council.

It was again stressed that the contemporary nature of challenges and threats calls for qualitatively different, truly collective answers than the expansion of military-political alliances created in the years of the Cold War.