The Russian Ambassador to Austria announced the impossibility of restoring relations with the EU in the previous format

Russian Ambassador to Austria Andrei Grozov said that restoring relations between Russia and the European Union in their previous format is impossible.

The new security architecture on the European continent must be built on a fundamentally new basis.

Moscow is seeking a new Eurasian security architecture as an alternative to models that Russia considers exhausted.

VIENNA, Oct 3 - RIA Novosti. Restoring relations between Russia and the European Union in their previous format is impossible, and the future security architecture on the European continent must be built on a fundamentally new basis, said Russian Ambassador to Austria Andrei Grozov.

The Russian diplomat stated that recently a colossal number of ties between Russia and Europe, which had been developed over decades, have been destroyed.

“Trust has been lost, economic relations have sharply declined, many cultural, scientific and diplomatic contacts have been interrupted. It is impossible to restore everything to its previous form. In China there is a proverb: you cannot step into the same river twice, because the river flows,” Grozov said in an interview with Slavist Talita Oreshkovich on the Marsonia News YouTube channel.

At the same time, the head of the Russian diplomatic mission emphasized that the geographical factor cannot be canceled, so Moscow and European countries in any case will be “forced to coexist side by side.” The question, he said, is only the future format of this coexistence.

According to the ambassador, the hypothetical new European security architecture should be based on specific agreements related, in particular, to ensuring transparency of military activities in border areas, preventing incidents in the air and at sea, arms control and restoring direct communication channels between the military.

At the same time, Grozov pointed to a shift in Moscow's strategic priorities.