June 7, 2018 (Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty) Joseph Dunford, the U.S. military’s top officer, will
meet with his Russian counterpart, Valery Gerasimov, in Helsinki on June 8 as
part of talks designed to prevent regional conflicts from escalating, the
Finnish military said. The U.S. and Russian militaries did not immediately
comment on the reported meeting of Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s military general staff. Researcher
Matti Pesu of the Finnish Foreign Policy Institute told Finnish news agency STT
that the talks are aimed at preventing an escalation of situations and
misunderstandings in conflicts in countries including Syria and Ukraine.
"In such tense situations,
these [meetings] are important because both parties want to avoid worsening the
situation. You want to increase transparency and keep the tensions from rising. It helps when you sit down and talk face-to-face," Pesu said. In
April, Gerasimov met with NATO Supreme Allied Commander Curtis Scaparrotti in
the Azerbaijani capital, Baku.
General Joseph
Dunford (right) and General Valery Gerasimov in Baku in February 2017
Relations between Moscow and
Washington and their militaries were severely damaged in 2014 following
Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula and its aid for separatists
in eastern Ukraine.
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