Euractiv.com published a report yesterday that there is a quiet channel of communication between NATO Military Committee Chairman Adm. Rob Bauer and Gen. Valeriy Gerasimov, the head of the Russian General Staff, which is pursuing a “more moderate” approach to the Ukraine crisis, in particular around the situation in the Black Sea. That report was promptly denied by an official statement of the Russian Defense Ministry. “There have been no contacts, much less ‘systematic,’ with the chairman of the NATO Military Committee or other representatives of the North Atlantic alliance within the framework of the non-existent US-Russian Crisis Commission on Conflict Resolution,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. “The published information about reaching some kind of ‘agreement’ with NATO Military Committee Chairman Rob Bauer on ‘safe vessel traffic in the Black Sea’ is a fiction from start to finish.”