US and Russia agree to boost military communications: Pentagon

The US and Russian militaries agree to “enhance communications” after a meeting between their top commanders in Azerbaijan on Thursday, the Pentagon says.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunford and his Russian counterpart Valery Gerasimov discuss military relations between the two countries as well as security in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere during their meeting in the capital Baku.

The two sides “have undertaken efforts to improve operational safety of military activities in order to decrease the prospects for crisis and avoid the risk of unintended incidents,” the Pentagon says in a statement. “The leaders further agreed to enhance communications on such stabilizing measures.”

The United States and Russia already maintain a permanent military communications line over their air operations in Syria to avoid incidents between their aircraft.

In Brussels on Thursday, US Defense Secretary James Mattis rejected a Russian call to immediately restore cooperation with the Russian military.

“We are not in a position right now to collaborate on a military level, but our political leaders will engage and try to find common ground or a way forward,” he told reporters.

Washington suspended all military cooperation with Moscow following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

— AFP