MOSCOW, 9 Sep-RIA Novosti. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov believes that the cooling of relations between Moscow and Washington does not mean that the countries have been working in the field of counterterrorism for the past 20 years in vain.
In an interview with RIA Novosti, he said that "during the twenty years that have passed since the events of 9/11 (the 2001 terrorist attack in the United States – ed.), cooperation between the Russian Federation and the United States in the field of counterterrorism has developed with varying degrees of intensity, and the current cooling of our relations does not mean that these two decades have allegedly been wasted and to no avail."
He recalled that the Russian side " has repeatedly stressed that the Russian-American dialogue that took place in 2018-2019 under the auspices of the foreign ministries of the two countries was quite productive."
"This dialogue had all the opportunities to become" all-weather", independent of external stimuli, but under far - fetched pretexts it was terminated unilaterally on the initiative of Washington, which hardly benefited anyone, " Syromolotov noted.
