MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The Black Sea will never be NATO’s sea, it is a common area, and there should be indivisible security, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
“The Black Sea will never be a ‘NATO sea.’ This is a common sea for all coastal states, it should be a sea of cooperation, interaction and security. And it should have indivisible security,” Peskov said.
The Kremlin believes that NATO and demilitarization are mutually exclusive concepts, the spokesman added.
Earlier in the day, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for turning the Black Sea into a “NATO sea”, at the same time stating the need for its demilitarization.
Currently there are no plans to hold phone talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
“At the moment, no telephone contacts between the leaders of Russia and China are scheduled,” Peskov said, answering a relevant question.
Xi paid a state visit to Russia from March 20-22, during which he had a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The leaders signed a joint statement on a plan to develop key areas of Russian-Chinese economic cooperation by 2030.