Putin Discuss Russia-US Relations with CIA Director Over Phone

Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed Russian-US relations, the diplomatic crisis, regional conflicts and cybersecurity in a phone conversation with Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday as quoted by VOA.

Answering a corresponding question, Peskov conformed that such a phone conversation did took place and provide no further details apart the baselines of the conversation focused on bilateral relations and issues of mutual interest.

CIA’s Burns visited Moscow with a delegation of high-ranking US officials on November 2-3, where he had meetings with Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev as well as with the Director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin.

According to the press service of the Russian Security Council, Burns’ meeting with Patrushev focused on the relations of Moscow and Washington while the agenda for the meeting with Naryshkin contained discussion over the fight against international terrorism and the interagency interaction.

Burns’ rare visit to Moscow was the latest in a series of high-level contacts intended to show that despite mutual distrust and a long list of disputes, both sides want to keep talking.

Washington’s ties with Russia have hit a series of post-Cold War lows over issues such as the cyberattacks against US targets originating in Russia, the jailing of opposition politician Alexey Navalny, Russian support for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Russia’s behavior toward Ukraine and the seizing of the Crimea Peninsula in 2014.

US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, Biden’a top Russia expert, traveled to Moscow last month for talks over the sizes of their respective embassies that failed to yield any progress in thea dispute between the two countries.

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