John Sullivan said that Washington and Moscow ‘must maintain the ability to talk to each other’, Russian state media reported.
The US ambassador to Moscow said Russia should not close the US embassy despite the crisis stemming from the war in Ukraine as the world’s two largest nuclear powers still have to continue dialogue, US ambassador to Moscow said.
Asked if the embassies of the two countries could close, John Sullivan told Russian state news agency TASS on Monday that such a move would be “a big mistake”.
President Vladimir Putin has viewed the invasion of Ukraine as a turning point in Russian history: an uprising against US hegemony, which the president says has humiliated Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 2014. 1991.
Ukraine – and its Western allies – say they are fighting to survive a reckless imperialist takeover that has killed thousands, displaced more than 10 million and turned the country into a wasteland. .
In an apparent attempt to send a message to the Kremlin, Sullivan, who was appointed US ambassador by President Donald Trump, told TASS that Washington and Moscow should not sever diplomatic ties.
Sullivan is quoted as saying: “We must maintain the ability to talk to each other.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken quipped last month that he wanted to dedicate Taylor Swift’s song We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together to Putin.
When asked about that comment, Sullivan said: “We’ll never break up completely either.”
Asked by TASS if the analogy meant embassies could be closed, Sullivan said: “They could – potentially, although I think that would be a big mistake.”
“As far as I understand, the Russian government has mentioned the method of severing diplomatic relations,” he said. “We cannot cut diplomatic relations and stop talking to each other.”
The Kremlin on Monday said it was interested in talks with the United States over nuclear weapons but said talks were unlikely at the moment.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “We are interested and believe that we will continue to negotiate and discuss this topic, given the tectonic changes we are seeing… the whole world. The world needs these kinds of talks.”
Despite the history of diplomatic tension between Moscow and Washington, relations between the two sides have not been severed since the United States established relations with the Soviet Union in 1933.
But relations between Washington and Moscow have deteriorated markedly since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Washington has imposed sweeping sanctions on the Russian economy and the US President. Joe Biden said that Putin is commit “genocide”.
In early May, the US House of Representatives Approving a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine provide economic and military support, help allies in the region, replenish weapons that the Pentagon has shipped overseas, and provide aid to address global food shortages.
Russia said it would expel an unspecified number of US diplomats In retaliation for Washington’s move of 12 representatives of Moscow based in New York to the United Nations in March, Russian state media reported.
America Closing the embassy in Belarus and allowed non-emergency personnel and their family members to leave their embassy in Moscow as Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
Several European countries that are US allies have expelled Russian diplomats because of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and Moscow has often responded with similar measures.
In the most recent move, Russia expel diplomats from France, Italy and Spain in retaliation for the expulsion of Russian diplomats from European countries on May 18.
