Moscow says nearly all diplomatic channels between the United States and Russia have been put on hold in a dramatic deterioration of outgoing President Obama’s relationship with the Russian government.
“Kremlin says nearly all communication channels between U.S. and Russia are frozen,” Reuters reported, citing RIA News.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government is angry that the Obama administration issued new sanctions Wednesday targeting Russian officials and businesses in response to the violence in Ukraine, where Russia has annexed Crimea and is backing separatists in the eastern part of the country.
“We retain the right to choose the time, place and form of our responsive actions in a way that suits us,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Tuesday.
A State Department spokesman did not have an immediate comment on the report.
The State Department maintained that the sanctions are justified in light of a recent uptick in violence, as the separatists are flouting a cease-fire agreement. “Over just the last two days, six Ukrainian service members have been killed and 33 wounded in a Russian separatist attempt to seize additional Ukrainian territory,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “The highest two-day casualty figure that we’ve seen since 2015.”
Putin’s suspension of “all communication channels” between the U.S. and Russia is a more dramatic version of Secretary of State John Kerry’s tactic of suspending bilateral negotiations over the Syrian civil war with Russia in October, in an attempt to pressure them into agreeing to a cease-fire agreement. But that effort failed, and the Russians continued to back Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s attack on a major rebel stronghold and Kerry continued to talk to the Russians about ways to end the conflict.
