Kremlin says we know Rutte, don't expect NATO policy to change

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it did not expect any change of policy from new NATO chief Mark Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister who has replaced Norway's Jens Stoltenberg as secretary general of the alliance.

"Our expectations are that the North Atlantic alliance will continue to work in the same direction in which it has been working," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, adding that President Vladimir Putin knew Rutte well from past meetings.

"At one time, there were hopes for the possibility of building good pragmatic relations - at least, such a dialogue was conducted - but subsequently we know that the Netherlands took a rather irreconcilable position, a position on the complete exclusion of any contacts with our country," he said.

"Therefore, we do not think that anything significantly new will happen in the alliance's policy."

Rutte is taking on the NATO job at a critical juncture in the war in Ukraine, where Russian forces are advancing in the east of the country, and just over a month before the U.S. presidential election.

"We have to make sure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent, democratic nation," he told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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