Just weeks after a summit meeting intended to show a thawing in relations between the United States and Russia, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made blistering references to Russia’s failing economy, loss of face and a leadership that is “clinging to something in the past” in an interview published on Saturday.
Speaking on the heels of his trip to Georgia and Ukraine, Mr. Biden said flatly that the Obama administration would make no deals and accept no compromises with the Kremlin in exchange for better relations. Russia itself, he said, should find it in its own interest to repair relations.
The Kremlin immediately responded to the comments, made in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, with a demand for a clarification of the administration’s intentions toward Russia, saying essentially that it was receiving a mixed message so soon after President Obama had visited Moscow for the summit meeting.
Calling the criticism “perplexing” in light of the diplomatic overtures initiated by the United States and described as “pressing the reset button,” the chief foreign policy adviser to President Dmitri A. Medvedev told the Interfax news agency, “The question is: who is shaping the U.S. foreign policy, the president or respectable members of his team?”
[Source:
nytimes.com]
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