A top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the lack of progress in mending ties between Russia and the US is damaging not only for the two countries themselves but also for the wider international community.
“One may state that the two largest nuclear powers still have not started normal joint efforts aimed at mending their bilateral interaction, which is currently in a deep crisis,” Yury Ushakov said in a speech at the Primakov Readings conference in Moscow. He added that the same also applies to other urgent international political issues.
“As far as the Russian side is concerned, of course we can continue to wait for the internal American rows to wear off, but we consider such stalling inadmissible, because we are risking not only the relations between Moscow and Washington, but the solution of certain tasks on the global scale, tasks that are important for global security and stability,” RIA Novosti quoted Ushakov as saying.
At the same conference, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that Russia was applying “significant effort” to restarting the strategic dialogue with the US concerning a vast spectrum of issues.
A study released by the Russian state-run public opinion research center VTSIOM in early June this year showed that the majority of Russians still see the United States and Ukraine as the most hostile nations towards them. Just over half – 54 percent – of Russians see no sign of improvement in Russia-US relations. An additional 17 percent think that relations between the two have deteriorated over the past year, while just 21 percent told researchers that relations had improved.