"The results are deplorable. The outgoing Democratic team crashed our bilateral ties to Cold War levels on purpose," Zakharova said. "It continued until the last day, I would say continues in its final hour to strike blows to their basis, as we are witnessing."
She pointed out that the US had shown such attitude to Moscow long before the events in Ukraine. This attitude evolved into the policy of isolationism, Zakharova said.
"Washington's policy of isolating Russia was strange to us at the beginning," Zakharova said. "Then, this rhetoric failed. <…> Later, US State Secretary John Kerry himself admitted that this policy had failed."
She pointed out a significant number of contacts with Russia's Foreign Ministry initiated by John Kerry at the 'peak' of the isolationism policy.
Zakharova further said that numerous attempts to recruit Russian diplomats have been made in the recent years.
"I'd like to point out at the fact that the Barack Obama administration has made it a normal practice putting pressure on Russian diplomatic missions in the US…when attempts to recruit the Russian [diplomatic] staff became an unpleasant routine, Zakharova said during a weekly news briefing in Moscow.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed that the US secret services stepped up their efforts to recruit Russian diplomats in the last few years.
"We sincerely regret that the presidency of Barack Obama, especially his second term, was a period of missed opportunities for the bilateral relations. It has not brought much good to the rest of the world as well, where instability over the past eight years, including due to the reckless moves of Washington, has intensified," Zakharova told reporters.
She expressed hope that "with the changes in the White House, it will be possible to reverse the dangerous trend of degradation of Russian-US relations, to pull relations out of the nosedive, in which Barack Obama drove them."
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