published on July 17,
2019, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian
Federation http://www.mid.ru/en http://www.mid.ru/en_GB/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3728033?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw&_101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw_languageId=en_GB
Question:
Can an improvement in the relations with the United States be expected in the
near future?
Sergey
Lavrov: An improvement will hardly materialise any time soon,
since it is anything but easy to sort out the mess that our relations are in,
which is not our fault. After all, bilateral relations require reciprocal
efforts. We have to meet each other half way.
Russia
is ready to move in this direction, as we have said on a number of occasions.
We proceed from the premise that Russia and the United States bear special
responsibility. We are the two largest nuclear powers, the founding members of
the United Nations and permanent members of its Security Council. Cooperation
between our two countries is key to ensuring stability and predictability in
international affairs. However, not everything depends on us. It takes two to
tango, as the saying goes.
The
situation is quite complicated on the American side. On the one hand, President
Donald Trump talks about seeking to be on good terms with Russia, but this
attitude is far from prevalent in Washington. We see this in unfriendly steps,
such as various groundless accusations Russia faces, imposing financial and
economic sanctions, seizing diplomatic property, kidnapping Russian nationals
in third countries, opposing Russia’s foreign policy interests, as well as
attempts to
