Russia earlier this week issued a foreign policy document proposing a strategic partnership with the United States and a collective security system across Europe.
But such a good-will gesture coincided with two separate military exercises by the United States and Russia near Russia's southern boarder, and analysts remain skeptical about whether the so called Foreign Policy Concept could heal the lingering Russia-West rifts.
RUSSIA-U.S. STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
"It is necessary to switch over Russian-U.S. relations to the state of strategic partnership, to overstep barriers of strategic principles of the past," says the document posted Tuesday on the Kremlin Web site.
Russia and the United States should "concentrate on real threats, and where differences persist, to work on their settlement in the spirit of mutual respect," says the paper ratified by President Dmitry Medvedev.
Moscow will work along with Washington in taking confidence-building measures, ensuring transparency in space explorations, anti-missile defense and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, securing development of peaceful nuclear power, enhancing cooperation in countering terrorism and other challenges, it says.
However, the often soft-spoken Medvedev Tuesday slammed a U.S. proposal to deploy missile shield components in Central Europe, which have soured bilateral ties since it was raised in early 2007.
"We will be forced to adequately react to this. Our American and European partners have been warned," he said in a speech to Russian ambassadors.
Also Tuesday, the United States and Georgia launched a Pentagon-funded joint military exercise in the South Caucasus region, while Russian troops were taking part in another drill near the border region.
