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White House: No notification Russia halted talks with US

26 April 2014 22:18 (UTC +04:00)

In an exclusive report on Friday, the Daily Beast said the Kremlin has suspended intensive high-level communications between top US and Russian officials.

However, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Laura Lucas Magnuson says interactions between Moscow and Washington have not been suspended.

“The United States has not suspended interactions between US-Russian leadership counterparts and has not been informed by the Russian government that it has,” The Hill quoted Magnuson as saying.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki also said that despite escalating tensions between the US and Russia over the crisis in Ukraine, the White House will continue to work with the Kremlin on various issues.

“In practice we've continued to work with Russia even while we've had strong disagreements about the steps they've taken in Ukraine,” said Psaki. “We still continue to work with Russia on a range of global issues.”

This comes as Obama is trying to nudge Washington’s European allies toward more sanctions against broad sections of Russia’s economy.

After Obama talked with some European leaders on Friday, US officials said the US president and top European leaders are moving ahead on a new round of sanctions against Russia.

The United States has already imposed sanctions on a number of Russian officials and a Russian bank, Bank Rossiya, but has not targeted the country’s entire economic sectors.

Meanwhile, the US has taken measures to boost its military presence in Eastern Europe, forcing Russia to respond through extensive military drills near its border with Ukraine.

On Wednesday, some 150 US Army troops arrived in Poland, the first of a contingent of 600 US forces being sent to the Baltic states.

On Friday, another 150 American troops arrived in Latvia and on Saturday a company of 150 US troops arrived in Lithuania. The last company of US troops is expected to arrive in Estonia early next week.

In a phone interview with Press TV on Saturday, Rick Rozoff, a member of Stop NATO International, said there is a real possibility for the US and Russia to enter a direct military confrontation.

“The prospects for a direct US-Russian military confrontation in Eastern Europe around the Ukrainian crisis are, I’m afraid to state, a very real possibility,” he said.