Voice of America
Image from article, with caption: State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.
Excerpt:The Kremlin has given marching orders to “unfriendly diplomats” from several Western countries in retaliation for the collective Western expulsion of Russian diplomats. ...
The United States on Thursday declared there is no justification for Russia’s retaliatory expulsion of American diplomats. The White House has said the like-for-like expulsions by Moscow “marks a further deterioration” of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.
“The expulsion of undeclared Russian intelligence officers by the United States and more than two dozen partner nations and NATO allies earlier this week was an appropriate response to the Russian attack on the soil of the United Kingdom. Russia’s response was not unanticipated, and the United States will deal with it," the statement reads. ...
The United States on Thursday declared there is no justification for Russia’s retaliatory expulsion of American diplomats. The White House has said the like-for-like expulsions by Moscow “marks a further deterioration” of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.
“The expulsion of undeclared Russian intelligence officers by the United States and more than two dozen partner nations and NATO allies earlier this week was an appropriate response to the Russian attack on the soil of the United Kingdom. Russia’s response was not unanticipated, and the United States will deal with it," the statement reads. ...
The Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Heather Nauert, also criticized Moscow’s actions, announced earlier in the day by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“Russia should not be acting like a victim,” the State Department spokeswoman added, remarking that the only real victims are those poisoned and inconvenienced by the March 4 release of a nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury. ...
Expressing concern about deteriorating relations between the two nuclear powers, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is calling for Washington and Moscow to discuss their differences.
"During the Cold War there were mechanisms of communication and control to avoid the escalation of incidents, to make sure that things would not get out of control when tensions would rise. Those mechanisms have been dismantled," Guterres told reporters. “I do believe that mechanisms of this sort are necessary again.”
U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman — who was summoned to the foreign ministry on Thursday — told VOA that it is “our desire, of course is to maintain dialogue on the issues that matter the most. Issues like strategic stability and arms control, which are not just a U.S.-Russia set of issues, but indeed impact the stability and the well-being of the entire globe.”
Just hours before being summoned to the foreign ministry, Huntsman told VOA that one of his biggest regrets through all the challenges he has faced in his job was seeing the U.S. diplomatic cut by 727 last year on the orders of the Kremlin. That, he said, had severely impacted the embassy’s cultural outreach programs as well as the processing of visas. He worried visa processing would be even more deeply impacted, if Russia went ahead with further expulsions.
He said: “Any Russian citizen who has been to the United States comes back transformed forever; and any American who comes here returns transformed, that is just the way it is. That is most powerful long-tern [sic] investment that can be made.” ...
No comments:
Post a Comment