Tallinn. December, 31st. INTERFAX - NATO's dialogue with Russia will help keep Moscow from escalating against Ukraine, Estonian Foreign Minister Eva-Maria Liimets said.
"In our opinion, the main purpose of these contacts was to keep the channels of dialogue open, so that with the help of the messages that we send directly, to keep Moscow from escalating against Ukraine," Liimets commented on Friday in an interview with the ERR broadcasting portal the last telephone talks between the Presidents of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden.
She stressed that "it is extremely important to prevent military escalation, to keep open channels for dialogue and, of course, to help Ukraine restore its territorial integrity."
Currently, there is a very active diplomatic process in which NATO allies communicate with each other and with Moscow, Liimets said.
"Such messages are now being transmitted both publicly and through diplomatic channels, and the allies, of course, are exchanging information about this," she said.
Liimets added that the member states of the European Union and the United States agreed in the first half of December that in the event of a military escalation in the border areas of Ukraine, they would resolutely counteract, including through economic sanctions.
During the telephone conversation, Putin and Biden discussed the key points of Moscow's proposed security guarantees. Putin stressed the inadmissibility of the deployment of offensive weapons in Ukraine.
