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Reuters
MOSCOW/BRUSSELS
The head of Russia's military general staff and NATO's supreme allied commander held a rare face-to-face meeting on Thursday to try to ease the worst East-West tensions since the Cold War.
US Army General Curtis Scaparrotti and Valery Gerasimov met in Baku, Azerbaijan, less than a week after the United States, Britain and France staged missile strikes on Syria in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad - a close ally of Russia. In separate statements, NATO and the Russian defence ministry said the meeting discussed military exercises and troop movements, as both sides accuse the other of risky deployments in the Baltic states and eastern Europe.
Scaparrotti and Gerasimov - who Western military officials say is a proponent of Russia's strategy of mixing military weaponry with cyber warfare and disinformation - discussed"questions concerning NATO and Russian military activity in the European region", the Russian defence ministry said.
NATO said the meeting"focused on issues related to military posture and exercises"- defence parlance for how to avoid military accidents that might lead to war.
