NATO announces review of cooperation with Russia

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said alliance officials would no longer hold staff-level meetings with their Russian counterparts, while stepping up engagement with Ukraine's civilian and military leadership.

"We have also decided that no staff-level civilian or military meetings with Russia will take place for now," Rasmussen told reporters after a meeting between NATO and Russian officials in Brussels.

NATO has been in talks with Russia on a possible joint mission to protect the U.S. cargo ship Cape Ray that will destroy Syria's deadliest chemical weapons.

Under a U.S.-Russia deal reached after a chemical attack killed hundreds of people around Damascus last year, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government should have handed over 1,300 tonnes of toxic chemicals by February 5 for destruction abroad.

NATO's ties with Russia have improved since the Cold War ended but deteriorated following the defence alliance's eastward expansion to take in former Communist-ruled countries in eastern Europe and Moscow's war in Georgia in 2008.

The alliance briefly suspended formal cooperation on security threats after the war but resumed it in 2009.

Since then, it cooperates with Moscow in a range of areas, including the alliance's military mission in Afghanistan, in counter-narcotics projects in Afghanistan and in combating terrorism and piracy.

Russia's envoy to NATO accused the alliance of applying double standards and "Cold War" stereotypes to Russia after the NATO announcement.

"This meeting proved that NATO still has a double standard policy. And Cold War stereotypes are still applied towards Russia," Alexander Grushko told reporters.

(Reporting by Justyna Pawlak; Ediitng by Sonya Hepinstall)