NATO's chief says the 28-member alliance has reached "broad agreement" to seek another meeting with Russia before NATO leaders meet in Warsaw in July.
Russian officials, however, appeared to downplay the possibility of a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council anytime soon.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on May 20 that the alliance's foreign ministers wanted a "dual-track approach" to pursue dialogue with the Kremlin but also keep reinforcing NATO defenses against what they see as a mounting Russian threat.
He said there was agreement to try and reconvene the council with Russia, which was created in 2002 but suspended for nearly two years in the wake of Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula in 2014.
Russia's representative to NATO, Aleksandr Grushko, meanwhile, told reporters in Brussels that "I don't know what our interlocutors mean by 'business as usual' when they say cooperation as earlier is impossible."
