State Department games over U.S.-Russian relations became downright silly yesterday.
All parties agree that U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Friday. But after the US Embassy issued a press release reporting Sullivan had gone to the Ministry to “discuss bilateral relations” and President Biden’s intent for stable and predictable relations with Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova issued a statement suggesting the U.S. Embassy should report why in fact Sullivan had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry.
“I’ve seen three [different] reasons for the summoning of the US envoy to the Russian Foreign Ministry. Actually, the Foreign Ministry did the summoning, and the Foreign Ministry knows the true reason for it,” Zakharova wrote on her Telegram account. “There is only one reason: the interference in the Russian elections. We hope this is what the US diplomats will report back to Washington, not what the US embassy said in its detached-from-reality press release.”
