NATO says reviewing cooperation agreements with Russia

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has announced a full review of its cooperation agreements with Russia over Moscow’s deployment of troops in Ukraine’ southern Crimea region.

“The entire range of NATO-Russia cooperation” is under review over Moscow’s involvement in Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in Brussels on Wednesday.

Rasmussen was speaking after a meeting between the Russian envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko and ambassadors for the western military alliance’s member states.

“We have also decided that no staff-level civilian or military meetings with Russia will take place for now,” he added.

However, Russian envoy to NATO accused the alliance of applying a “double standard” policy on the issue.

Meanwhile, The European Union (EU) said it was freezing the assets of 18 Ukrainians suspected of misappropriating Ukrainian state funds, including the country’s ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.

The US and its European allies have repeatedly threatened Russia with sanctions over its actions in Ukraine specially its military build-up in the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

Moscow sent hundreds of its forces to Crimea after the Russian parliament authorized President Vladimir Putin to use armed forces “to protect Russia’s interests in that region.”

Political crisis erupted in Ukraine in November last year, when Yanukovych refrained from signing an Association Agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia.

The Ukrainian parliament removed the president from power and named Oleksandr Turchynov, the legislature’s speaker, as the Eastern European country’s interim president.