Russia-US relations risk ‘being severed’ – Moscow

There is a real possibility that diplomatic relations between the US and Russia could be entirely severed, the Foreign Ministry in Mocow has warned. While Russia wants to avoid such a scenario, Washington’s insistence on confrontational policies makes the situation ever more likely, it said.

Relations between the two nuclear powers hit rock bottom after Russia’s years-long confrontation with Ukraine led in early 2022 to military action. The Kremlin claims that Washington is using Kiev as a proxy to effectively wage a war against Moscow.

In a statement on Thursday that marked the 90th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic ties between the USA and the USSR, the Russian foreign ministry said that “there is a risk that these relations can be severed at any moment” again. The ministry blamed this on “irresponsible” US policies that “promote further escalation,” and on Washington’s pursuit of Moscow’s “strategic defeat.”

Having embraced “rampant Russophobia” as its guiding principle, the US has already reduced bilateral relations to “next to nothing,” the ministry in Moscow added.

According to the statement, US elites have deluded themselves into believing that US hegemony is absolute, and that no country is in a position to question it. In its refusal to recognize the “tectonic geopolitical shifts” and the reshuffle of the “global balance of power” that are underway, the US has doubled down on its policy of containment vis-a-vis China and Russia, in a futile attempt to reverse the current trends toward multipolarity, it claimed.

However, there is still hope that the powers-that-be in Washington finally take their cue from their Cold War-era predecessors and reshape their policies toward Russia “based on respect and taking each other’s interests into account,” the statement concluded.

Last month, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov pointed to an article by prominent US economist Jeffrey Sachs, which called for a new US-Russia détente, saying that such a perspective, while far from being the predominant one, was “gradually gaining momentum” in Washington.

In September, President Vladimir Putin said, however, that the Biden administration is unwilling to engage in any meaningful dialogue at this point. Responding to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s suggestion that Moscow was not prepared to “tango” with Kiev to reach a peace agreement, the Russian head of state retorted that the US itself is notorious for not knowing “how to do this tango.”