Ukraine and NATO representatives on Tuesday discussed the possibility of sending NATO military instructors to Ukraine to train Ukrainian civil defence forces, Ukraine’s acting Defence Minister Andrei Deshchitsa said after a meeting of the NATO -Ukraine commission on Tuesday.

“We discussed a possibility of sending mobile groups of instructors to Ukraine to train its civil defence forces,” he said.

NATO’s former Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen did not rule out sending mobile groups of military instructors to Ukraine. However, he excluded the possibility of sending NATO’s armed forces to Ukraine.

In the meantime, NATO has stopped all practical military and civilian cooperation with Russia over Ukraine’s crisis, the NATO Council at the level of foreign ministers said in its final statement on Tuesday.

However, the Russia-NATO Council will continue meeting at the level of ambassadors and at a higher level in order to keep the door open for a dialogue with Russia.