Talks between the US and Russia on resolving bilateral issues will be moved from Istanbul to Moscow, Russia’s new ambassador to Washington, Alexander Darchiev, told the state news agency TASS on Wednesday, the 11th of June, according to Reuters.
“There is still a long way to go to restore relations between Russia and the US,” the ambassador told TASS, adding that the restoration of relations is being hampered by the so-called “deep state” in the US and anti-Russian “hawks” in Congress.
“I can confirm that the next delegation talks will take place in Moscow in the near future,” Darchiev was quoted as saying.
The war in Ukraine has caused the biggest conflict between Moscow and the West since the Cold War. Leading diplomats in Moscow and Washington have previously said that they cannot remember relations between the two countries ever being worse. US President Donald Trump’s team sees the war as a proxy war between the US and Russia, and Trump has often warned that it could escalate into a world war.
Meanwhile, LRT reports that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the state news agency TASS that Moscow will end the war in Ukraine after NATO withdraws its troops from the Baltic states.
Ryabkov was quoted on Monday as saying that the so-called root cause of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is NATO’s eastward expansion.
The official responsible for negotiations with the US appears to have returned to the Kremlin’s 2022 ultimatum demanding that NATO withdraw to its 1997 borders.
Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia had demanded that Ukraine surrender its weapons, abandon its plans to join NATO and withdraw NATO troops from Eastern Europe. Baltic officials have said that this could have paved the way for a Russian attack on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
In response, NATO sent additional troops to these countries in 2014, and in 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion, NATO troop numbers were increased across Eastern Europe.
Next talks between the US and Russia to take place in Moscow
