At her press briefing in Moscow on Feb. 18, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented about the European reaction to the resumption of U.S.-Russia relations, “We see a nervous, if not to say panicky reaction of the West to the Russia-U.S. contacts. Russian-American contacts at high and the highest levels are causing real hysteria among Euro-Atlantic Russophobes.”
As reported by TASS, Zakharova noted “an unprecedented phenomenon in international relations: the imposition of one’s own participation in the negotiation process. We are talking about some British-EU friends of the criminal regime of Zelensky, who are demonstrating an inability to go beyond their own primitive attitudes to produce a hybrid war with our country to the last Ukrainian.”
Reuters also reports from the same press briefing that Zakharova responded to a media question that it was “not enough” for Ukraine to not be admitted to NATO, but that NATO must go further by disavowing its Bucharest promise made in 2008 that Ukraine would join at a future, unspecified date. “Otherwise, this problem will continue to poison the atmosphere on the European continent.”
