MOSCOW, Jan. 18, 2018
Donald Trump said during his election campaign he wanted to improve relations between the US and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But a year on from his inauguration, ties between Washington and Moscow are at Cold War lows.
As American investigators continue to probe Russian involvement in Trump’s shock 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton, Moscow talks of the US president as a hostage to internal political struggles who are unable to improve ties.
“Russian-American relations deserve better, our people deserve better,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told AFP. “We were always in favor of developing bilateral relations regardless what president came to power in the US,” she said.
Tensions between Washington and Moscow have continued to grow despite the promises of the then Republican candidate and his early nomination of Rex Tillerson — who has personal ties to Putin — to Secretary of State.
The Cold War rivals have clashed over crises in Ukraine, Syria, and Iran, with reciprocal expulsions of diplomats last year. Following Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war between Kiev and Kremlin-backed rebels, the US has imposed ever-stricter sanctions on Moscow.
In his diplomatic roundup of 2017 on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeatedly attacked the US on virtually all topics, suggesting a disappointment in the new president.
“Unfortunately the actions of the current administration are in the line of Obama’s, despite the line of president Trump during his election campaign. In certain areas, they are even more assertive,” Lavrov said at an annual press conference.
