Russia-NATO: is rapprochement possible?

"The NATO bloc should focus on terrorism and migration, as well as on threats from Russia and from the east and south," US President Donald Trump said yesterday, speaking at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Experts doubt the cooperation between Moscow and NATO is possible in conditions when bloc's leader considers Russia one of the main threats. Nevertheless, Russian and US military maintain contacts. The U.S. military and Russia have stepped up their communication about operations over Syria to include dialogue between U.S. and Russian generals in the Middle East, said the top Air Force general in the region, Stars and Stripes writes in an article "US, Russia boost dialogue about Syria operations to include generals".

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, the commander of Air Forces Central Command, told reporters at the Pentagon that so-called "deconfliction" between the two countries has been boosted as the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State progresses in preparation for an assault on Raqqa, the de facto capital of the militant group. The talks are designed to prevent any aerial accidents or clashes between aircraft.

"We have had to increase the amount of deconfliction work we are doing with the Russians given the tighter airspace that we are now working ourselves through," Harrigian said, speaking from his headquarters in Qatar. "The Russians, while we don't give them the specifics, we note where we are going to operate so that we can portray that to them in a manner that allows us to continue our attack on the enemy and gives us the freedom of movement we need."

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced last week in a news conference that a new deconfliction "channel" was added recently between the Russians and the Americans to ensure the safety of aviators and troops on the ground. Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, a member of Dunford's staff, regularly communicates with Russian officers as part of it, Dunford said.

Jeffrey Harrigian added Wednesday that deconfliction talks also were enhanced within the last few months to include his deputy, Air Force Maj. Gen. David Nahom, speaking with Russian officers. That has occurred only a few times, Harrigian said, but it has helped both sides make clear what their plans are. "I'm putting coalition airmen into what can be very complex and dynamic situations," the general said. "My job is to provide them with as clear and unambiguous intent as possible."

The U.S. and Russia first reached an agreement in which a U.S. colonel and a Russian counterpart could call each other to make sure their nation's operations did not overlap unsafely.

Meanwhile, according to Sergey Oznobishchev, director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, the deterrence mechanisms that worked and were developed during the Cold War have now been destroyed: "Now we consider the fact that it's possible to call each otherby some special phone a great achievement. There are constant conflicts in the air - one fighter flew too close to another, or to the ship. But there are Soviet-American documents of 1972-1979 on the prevention of dangerous incidents in the air. There's a detailed description of what to do, what distances should be observed."

Recently, Russia received NATO's consent to discuss the prohibition of flights over the Baltic with transponders turned off in detail. This proposal was initiated by former president of Finland Sauli Niinistö. However, Oznobishchev believes it's not enough: "Current situation is dangerous, and political decisions must be made by both sides. We must get together and restore Russia-NATO mechanism."

President of the Russian Association of Baltic Studies, Nikolai Mezhevich, named stages of deterioration of relations between Russia and NATO - Yugoslav crisis; NATO expansion to the East; Crimea. "Of course, the time of the Napoleonic armies is over. No one is going to put 300 thousand people against each other, or 2 thousand tanks against 2 thousand tanks - there's no place in the Baltics to do this. But the risks have changed, and geography doesn't help to strengthen stability, it only makes things worse, since the path from St. Petersburg to Kaliningrad passes directly near the borders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. There's no trust, at least in the format proposed by President of Finland. Any flight, any movement of ship has a potential risk of an accidental conflict."