MOSCOW, July 28 (RIA Novosti) – Russian and US leaders have not severed their ties, although the split over Ukraine has soured their relations, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Monday.
“Contacts are still there, telephone talks continue. [Their] personal meetings are, of course, not so frequent as they used to be before the Ukrainian turmoil, but it doesn’t necessarily mean there are no links-up at all,” the senior Russian diplomat said in an interview with Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency.
Ryabkov stressed that phone talks between Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama are “very comprehensive and relevant,” adding he didn’t notice any “permanent change” in their relations.
He also said dialogue between Moscow and Washington continued “at other levels.”
The last time Putin and Obama met in person was during the D-Day anniversary in France on June 4 that commemorated the Allied landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944. The Kremlin noted in a report there were no private talks, although the two leaders did use their chance to “exchange opinions on the situation in Ukraine, as well as on the crisis in the country’s east.”
