Russia said today that the US has canceled an upcoming bilateral meeting on the normalization of the work of diplomatic missions. The meeting was supposed to be part of the rapprochement between Moscow and Washington that began months ago, Agence France-Presse and TASS reported, quoted by BTA.
"The upcoming meeting was canceled at the initiative of the American negotiators," said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry. "We hope that the pause will not be too long," she added, without specifying the possible reasons for the postponement.
The work of diplomatic missions is one of the "irritants", as Moscow calls them, in relations between Russia and the US. The two countries recently held talks in Turkey on this issue. Last week, the Russian ambassador to Washington, Alexander Darchiev, assured that a new round of bilateral consultations is expected to take place soon in Moscow, but Washington has not commented on this statement.
These talks are taking place after several years of mutual declarations of diplomats as persona non grata and obstruction of the work of the respective embassies, amid extreme tensions, related in particular to the conflict in Ukraine. In recent weeks, however, the pace of talks between Russians and Americans has slowed, and the prospect of a quick agreement to resolve the conflict in Ukraine - as Donald Trump had promised - seems unlikely.
"There are many obstacles in bilateral relations and we can hardly expect quick results", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, while stressing that "hard work will continue".
In addition to the difficult Ukrainian issue, Russians and Americans also want to discuss more global topics such as their economic relations, the security architecture in Europe and arms control.