LONDON (Reuters) The Kremlin said on Wednesday that communications in relations with the United States remain “essential” amid tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Communication is essential, we will need to continue communicating in the future,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a conference call on Wednesday when asked about the status of USRussia relations.
“The US isn’t going anywhere, Europe isn’t going anywhere, so we have to communicate with them somehow.”
Relations between Russia and the West were already at one of their lowest levels since the end of the Cold War, even before Moscow dispatched tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine in what it calls a “military special operation.”
The West responded with an unprecedented series of sanctions, and US President Joe Biden has vowed to make Russian President Vladimir Putin an “outcast” on the world stage. Russia has accused Washington of waging an “economic war”.
Peskov said the current situation makes it “unlikely” that the two sides would return to what he called the “Geneva spirit” a nod to a 2021 summit between Biden and Putin that raised hopes for a limited truce woke up.
“Is it possible to go back to the spirit of Geneva when there was still hope? Hardly,” said Peskov. “It’s unlikely that we’ll be able to indulge old hopes given what’s happening now.”
He said future communications between the two countries the world’s largest nuclear powers must be based on “mutual respect and mutual benefit”.
But he added: “This is not a shortterm issue.”