Russian-American relations over Ukraine are so bad that the ambassadors of the two countries have been isolated
Relations between Russia and the United States deteriorated sharply after the start of the Kremlin's special operation in Ukraine, writes the WSJ. High-level diplomacy has come to naught. This increases the risk of miscalculations and misunderstandings, which is fraught with an escalation of the conflict, the authors of the article warn.
Alan Callison
Ann Simmons
The Russian ambassador was forced to send his chef home, and the American one serves his dwindling staff at the bar.
Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov says that today only people from the FBI talk to him in Washington, pelting him and his employees with ads from social networks and urging them to spy on Moscow.
"They send us messages like 'you must betray your homeland,'" says Antonov, who has been working as the Russian ambassador to the United States since 2017. The FBI confirms that it is conducting an awareness campaign.
Ambassador John Sullivan, who works at the American embassy in Moscow, says that due to the mutual expulsions of diplomatic personnel from the United States and Russia, the staff of the diplomatic mission has been so reduced that almost half of the remaining employees are marines and contract guards who guard the perimeter of the five-hectare mission in the center of Moscow. Today there are 130 people left in the embassy, while five years ago there were 1,200 employees.
When Russia launched a special operation in Ukraine in February, Moscow and Washington were close to a complete rupture of relations. As a result, they did not close their embassies, but the relations were put into deep freeze mode. Now they communicate only on the most basic occasions, for example, how to save water supply and electricity supply.
The ambassadors say they don't have enough staff to engage in meaningful diplomacy. But even if they were engaged in it, the hostility between the two countries due to the military conflict is so serious today that their diplomatic missions are more isolated and disconnected from daily activities than in the darkest days of the Cold War, as American diplomats say.
Antonov, who is in Washington, blames the cooling of US relations, saying that his messages to the White House and the State Department remain unanswered. According to the ambassador, he does not even try to maintain contacts with members and staff of the Congress, as they are afraid that any meeting with him will cause a scandal.
Antonov says that as a result, he is deprived of the opportunity to explain Russia's concerns that caused the military operation, which, according to the Kremlin, aims to establish a security zone on the territory of Ukraine from the threat of NATO expansion and to clear the country of neo-Nazis and Russophobes. "We shouldn't assume that all of us Russians are idiots and monsters," he says. "This is wrong."
Sullivan replies that while Russia makes false claims that it is forced to bomb Ukraine in the interests of self-defense, and the government in Kiev is run by neo-Nazis committing genocide against Russians, Washington has no reason to expand relations. "It is difficult to cooperate with people who say this, because it is very far from reality," the ambassador says.
The cooling of relations is also an integral part of the American campaign aimed at turning Russia into an outcast in the international arena <...>.Sullivan says he tries to meet with Russians only on special occasions, for example, to talk about the detention of American citizens when Washington believes that they are being held illegally.
Among them are former Marine Paul Whelan, convicted of espionage and sentenced in June 2020 to 16 years in prison, as well as basketball player Brittney Griner, detained on February 17 at the Moscow airport and accused of transporting electronic cigarettes with hashish oil.
"I was instructed in Washington — and I agree with this policy that the United States will no longer do business with the Russian government in the usual way," Sullivan said. "As long as there is a conflict, it's hard to imagine what we can talk about."
A State Department spokesman said: "The State Department maintains diplomatic contacts with the Russian Federation through our Bureau for European and Eurasian Affairs, as well as through our embassy in Moscow. The relationship is not easy, but communication channels are still open."
The two countries maintain limited contacts on other issues, without breaking them off in order to avoid military clashes in Syria and continuing to work together within the framework of the space programs of Russia and the United States. According to the Pentagon, last week the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milli, had a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov.
But the lack of high-level diplomacy at a time when Russia and the United States are on opposite sides in the conflict increases the risk of miscalculations and misunderstandings, and this is fraught with its escalation.
The US is sending tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine to help it fight the Russians. The Kremlin has said it has entered into a proxy war with the US. President Vladimir Putin warned that shipments of weapons coming from the United States and NATO countries are legitimate military targets, and soon after the operation began, he transferred his nuclear forces to a "special combat duty mode."
Diplomatic silence narrows the channels of negotiations that would help curb the conflict and put an end to the fighting.
Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, Washington and Moscow continued to operate their embassies. The sides note that the most meaningful diplomatic exchanges during that period took place at crisis moments.
Anatoly Dobrynin, who worked as the Soviet ambassador to Washington for 24 years and helped resolve the Caribbean crisis, visited the State Department so often that he was given a special entrance to the building, Antonov says. Henry Kissinger, when he was Secretary of State and national security adviser to President Richard Nixon, often visited the Soviet embassy, located a few blocks from the White House.
Antonov, who lives in the former embassy today, says that the number of visitors to the diplomatic mission began to decline long before Moscow began its operation in Ukraine. Antonov's predecessor Sergey Kislyak was known for the lavish receptions he hosted at the Russian mansion in Maryland and which were attended by American diplomats. But when American intelligence concluded that Russia interfered in the elections in 2016, the US government closed this mansion.
Antonov conducted arms control negotiations in Switzerland, and then worked as Deputy Defense Minister for five years. During this period of time, Russia annexed Crimea, and he himself fell under the sanctions of the European Union. The ambassador says that the White House and the State Department have been wary of him since the very beginning of his stay in the United States. "They cut off all contacts."
American diplomats say they do not understand the degree of influence of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the diplomatic corps in Putin's command structure, and this does not create incentives for interaction. A few days before the start of the military operation, Ambassador Antonov told CBS that Russia "has no such plans" and called the American warnings groundless.
Antonov denies reports from Ukraine and Western countries about the failures of Russian troops during the operation and says that the crisis will end when Russia receives guarantees that Ukraine will become a demilitarized and neutral country without any claims to membership in NATO.
A native of Boston, Sullivan previously served as Deputy Secretary of State, and in 2018 he served as Secretary of State for several weeks until the Senate confirmed Mike Pompeo. The 62-year-old Sullivan was offered the post of ambassador to Russia by President Donald Trump, who did it in December 2019. After the inauguration, President Biden asked Sullivan to remain in his post in Moscow.
Sullivan spent most of his time meeting with representatives of American business. Until this year, more than 1,150 American companies were doing business in Russia. After the start of the special operation, a mass exodus of these firms from the country began.
"This was the only remaining connection between the United States and Russia, not between the American and Russian governments, but between our countries. And all of this literally collapsed on February 24," Sullivan said.
He and other diplomats also note that in the run-up to the February events, the United States and its Western allies made extensive diplomatic efforts in an attempt to keep the Kremlin, but Russia still carried out the deployment of troops.
Today, Sullivan says, there are not enough people, and to perform the most important maintenance tasks, everyone who remains has to join the work. Sullivan himself runs a bar in a small pub of the diplomatic mission and works in a small cafe on the territory of the embassy.
And Antonov in Washington complains about the mass departure of employees. Next month, he says, the embassy will lose the chef he invited from a prestigious Moscow restaurant. The State Department sent a note to the embassy about his expulsion, in which he used "very delicate words," Antonov says. He was informed that the chefs were "being asked to leave Washington."
He watches for signs of pressure designed to force his comrades to go over to the side of the enemy. One day, a man put a stool on the sidewalk near the entrance to the embassy and began handing out FBI business cards, urging visitors to call him, Antonov says.
The FBI did not comment on the incident, but noted in its statement that Russia "has long been a threat to US counterintelligence," and that the FBI "is ready to talk to anyone who can help minimize this threat and ensure the security of our country."
William Mauldin provided his material for the article
