Addressing the online Fort Ross Dialogue conference that started on Tuesday, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has expressed grave concern over Moscow-Washington relations, stressing the uncertainty that surrounds them and the risk it brings.
The senior Russian diplomat said that Moscow-Washington bilateral relations today are facing with very tough and challenging crisis that is in some aspects even worse than the Cold War era when there were clear frameworks and rules.
Ryabkov noted during the address that the third round of the Russian-US dialogue on strategic stability will continue ‘within weeks’ and the plan is to intensify the consultations base the Russian and US Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, agreed upon during their summit meeting in Geneva in June.
Hoping that the comprehensive dialogue on strategic stability can produce positive results, Moscow and Washington are also planning to begin consultations on cybersecurity, prisoner swap and arms control.
Ryabkov has addressed another burning issue between the two countries- the diplomatic mission and staff issue, inviting the United States to normalize the process of rendering consular services by sending more diplomats to Moscow.
He complained that the diminished US diplomatic and consular presence in Russia at the moment is preventing the mission to offer the very basic consular services, like visa issuing.
On top of that, Russians must now travel to Warsaw to apply for US visas instead doing that in their home country.
After the US Embassy in Moscow stopped processing most visa applications in May due to the ban on employing embassy staff in Russia, the State Department has added Russians to the so-called “homeless nationalities” who can apply for visas in third countries.
Ryabkov called the situation completely intolerable and urged the US side to incease the staff number the US embassy in Moscow to at least ensure that consular service since it may well end with closing the embassies in Washington and in Moscow.
The Russian Foreign Ministry stressed that nobody was preventing the US embassy – that has been operating with a skeleton staff of 120 employees since August 1- to fill up the 455 diplomats quota with US staff.
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