Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called his lieutenant in the United States back from Washington to discuss a potential “irreversible deterioration in relations,” according to a senior Russian diplomat.
“We are interested in preventing an irreversible deterioration in relations, if the Americans become aware of the risks associated with this,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.
U.S. intelligence agencies this week accused Russian intelligence operatives of disseminating claims “aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump,” including through media outlets and “prominent U.S. individuals” aligned with Trump’s team. That conclusion, which dovetails with sanctions issued by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the 2020 campaign, set the table for the most pronounced display of discord between the U.S. and Russia of Biden’s nascent administration.
“He will pay a price,” Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin during a televised interview that aired Wednesday. “We had a long talk, he and I. I know him relatively well, and the conversation started off, I said, ‘I know you, and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared.’”
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Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov’s trip back to Moscow will allow in-person “consultations in order to analyze what needs to be done” about U.S.-Russia relations, according to Lavrov’s team.
“The most important thing for us is to identify ways of rectifying Russia-US relations, which have been going through hard times as Washington has, as a matter of fact, brought them to a blind alley,” Zakharova said.
American foreign policy strategists in both parties tend to blame Putin’s aggressive foreign policy for the tensions, given that former President Barack Obama began his tenure with the infamous “reset” following Putin’s invasion of Georgia. That gesture seemed to ease tensions between 2009 and 2013, but Putin annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014 — a conflict that remains unresolved.
“The Russians want an end to sanctions. They would like to continue their aggression in Ukraine and have the United States and the [European Union] let it happen without consequences,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “There’s bad relations between the United States and Russia because the United States got tired of years of Russian aggression and provocations and finally began to take some measures.”
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Putin’s allies portrayed Biden’s remarks as an unconscionable insult. “Biden insulted citizens of our country with his statement. It is hysteria caused by powerlessness,” Russian lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin, the equivalent of the speaker of the house, wrote Wednesday on social media. “Putin is our president, and attacks on him are attacks on our country.”
