Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), and a speaker at the June 26-27 Schiller Institute conference “War with Russia and China Is Worse than MAD!”, told TASS in an interview published Aug. 10, that he currently sees no signs of improvement in U.S.-Russian relations. In fact, he observed, after the Putin-Biden summit, Biden had said there should be a waiting period of some months, before anything more specific could be said about the perspective for U.S.-Russian relations. It’s as if Biden had given the Russian President some “homework,” and expected him to make the policy changes the U.S. wanted, Kortunov said. But “If the U.S. side really thinks so, then such expectations are futile, of course, because the Russian leadership has no wish or readiness to make any fundamental changes to its policy.”
The RIAC director anticipated that, as a result, “Then we will most probably see more sanctions and other repression towards the Kremlin. Many in Biden’s America have been calling for this.” And as Russia heads into the State Duma elections on Sept. 19, Moscow’s rhetoric toward the West can be expected to become much harsher. Recall that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned Aug. 9 there will likely be Western attempts to interfere in these elections.
