CIS

Home page

CIS

Russia not to bow to U.S. pressure: officials

08 December 2014 18:31 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Moscow will not yield to Washington's pressure on principal issues, but is ready to seek the most possible balance of interests with the Unites States and do its best to stabilize bilateral relations, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Monday.

"We aren't ready to make concessions with the U.S. on principal issues, but we are prepared and will find a balance of interests, a common denominator, wherever possible," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying during a hearing on Russia-U.S. relations held in the State Duma, the parliament's lower chamber.

He stressed that it now depends entirely on the U.S. for any further development of bilateral relations, especially when "it is impossible for the U.S. to solve the most important international issues or to fight modern challenges and threats without Russia."

Further aggravation of bilateral relations is possible, despite Russia's efforts to rebuild relations with the U.S. on a sensible and stable basis, he said.

Moreover, Moscow has been concerned with a resolution of the U.S. Congress which, according to Ryabkov, declared an "information war" against Russia.

"We see the resolution as another step and a further development of the dominating trends in Washington's policy toward Russia lately," he said, adding that the "visible and practically unconcealed goal" of U.S. economic sanctions is to create conditions for a change of regime in Russia.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution "strongly condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination."

The resolution called on U.S. President Barack Obama to "cooperate with allies and partners in Europe and other countries around the world to impose visa bans, targeted asset freezes, sectorial sanctions, and other measures on the Russian Federation and its leadership," according to the document.

Ryabkov also accused the U.S. of lobbying its allies to maintain anti-Russian sanctions, saying that it will take years for Russia to overcome the sanctions.

Meanwhile, Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the State Duma, said during the same hearing that the resolution adopted by the U.S. showed that Russia is regarded as nothing but a hostile state.

"It would be appropriate to describe current relations as another edition of the Cold War," he said, adding that, even so, a military confrontation between Russia and the U.S. is highly unlikely.

Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for International Studies in National Research University's High School of Economics, told Xinhua that for the mid-term future, continuous political-diplomatic containment of Moscow by Washington obviously would be a core issue in the relationship between the two countries.

"Both sides would even more likely try to maintain the status quo. The U.S. will attempt to squeeze Russia out of the former Soviet countries, to minimize Moscow's influence in Europe and Asia-Pacific region, while Russia will try to fight back," he said.