A think tank that has taken a critical view of military exercises by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia is releasing a new paper Monday that pushes for new steps to try to reduce the risk of military escalation between the two.

The report, written by Lukas Kulesa of the European Leadership Network, calls for more dialogue between NATO and Russia and restraint with additional military deployments.

The report also calls on NATO to refrain from building up permanent bases. Still, Mr. Kulesa said the moderate increase in troops NATO is set to consider at a defense ministers' meeting this week is reasonable and clearly purely defensive.

“Things have changed since Crimea, there is no going back to 2013 and a light footprint in the east,” Mr. Kulesa said. “We envision a posture that is robust enough to discourage any adventurism.” Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Where previous ELN reports have been criticized by the alliance for drawing an equivalency between its actions and Moscow’s exercises, the recommendations in the latest paper hew much more closely to the alliance’s current position.