Improvement Of US-Russia Relations ‘Impossible’ Under Biden, Ambassador Says

Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov has issued a dire assessment of the current state of US-Russia relations in an interview with Russia’s Channel One.

He said that no one should expect relations with Washington to improve at all under President Joe Biden, and at one point even called the prospect “impossible”. 

Russian embassy in Washington D.C., via AP

“Improvement of Russian-US relations seems to be impossible in the near future. What the current administration is focused on is how to stay in the Oval Office of the White House,” he said in the interview. This strongly suggests Moscow is hoping for a new US administration after November.

“They will not review their Russian policy, because it will make it look like this policy had failed,” Antonov added. His words come at a moment American public opinion is increasingly swaying against Biden’s push to sink tens of billions of dollars more in defense aid into Ukraine, which has been a noticeable shift since at least early last year.

Moscow has briefly held out hope that given some of the momentary goodwill shown by the West in the wake of last Friday’s Crocus City Hall terrorist attack which left at least 140 dead, there might be an improvement of ties – at least in terms of restoring cooperation on common interests like counterterrorism efforts.

“The United States strongly condemns yesterday’s deadly terrorist attack in Moscow,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken had said in a Saturday statement. “We condemn terrorism in all its forms and stand in solidarity with the people of Russia in grieving the loss of life from this horrific event.”

Ambassador Antonov explained that he had expected a senator or a congressman to at least pay a condolence visit to the Russian embassy given the enormity of last Friday’s terror attack, but “nothing like this happened”.

He then noted that “The State Department sent a minor official, who is not a foreign policy decision-maker.”

Antonov said in separate statements this week that since the Crocus Hall attack the Kremlin has only had “transitory” contacts with the US administration, but that next week there will be opportunity to discuss “bilateral relations, about how we can live on, and if there is any chance at all for Russian-American relations not to be completely destroyed.”

He previously described that “only crumbs” remain of US-Russian relations, and this includes mainly the deconfliction hotline in Syria, space exploration, and some contact groups that work on nuclear proliferation. Still, several end of Cold War era weapons treaties have collapsed, as Washington has ratcheted anti-Russian sanctions related to the Ukraine war.