MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The dialogue on European security is impossible without Russia, and Greece will use its presence in various EU institutions to promote Moscow's involvement in such dialogue, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Wednesday.
"No one can imagine that Russia would not be part of this dialogue, so Greece will try, within the limits of its possibilities,…to assist in building bridges of cooperation and dialogue between the European Union and Russia," Tsipras stressed.
The issue of collective European security in the post-Cold War era has escalated over the past year, when Western nations adopted an isolationist stance toward Russia after the Crimean peninsula's reunification and the conflict that erupted in southeast Ukraine.
Simultaneously, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has continued its military expansion into Eastern Europe and the Baltic states teetering along Russia's western borders.
Moscow has maintained that accusations of Russian interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine and the "annexation" of Crimea are baseless, further emphasizing the threat to regional security and escalated tensions posed by NATO's encroachment.