The announcement from the Russian foreign ministry came after US President Joe Biden said Russia would “pay a price” for meddling in US elections and he agreed with the assessment that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is a “killer”.
.
Russia said it had summoned its Washington ambassador to Moscow for consultations on its ties with the United States, but stressed it wanted to prevent an “irreversible deterioration” in relations.
“The Russian ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Antonov, has been invited to come to Moscow for consultations conducted with the aim of analysing what should be done and where to go in the context of ties with the United States,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
Zakharova said the most important thing for Moscow was to determine how to mend Russian-US ties “that have essentially been driven by Washington into a dead end in recent years”.
She said Russia was interested in preventing the bilateral relations’ “irreversible deterioration if Americans understand the risks associated with it”.
The foreign ministry did not reference Biden’s remarks on Putin, but said Moscow wanted to analyse the results of Biden’s first 100 days in office.
‘He will pay a price’
In an interview with ABC News broadcast on Wednesday, Biden was asked about a declassified US intelligence report that said Putin tried to harm his candidacy in the November 2020 election and promote that of his rival Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden brands Putin a ‘killer’
Moscow’s ties with the West, already languishing at post-Cold War lows since 2014, have come under new pressure over the jailing of Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.
William Roache (Analysis Editor Newspresslive )
