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US Envoy to UN Says Moscow 'Not to Be Washington's Friend Unless Changes Policy'

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia is not a friend to the United States and will not be until its government has "the values that it has," US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said at the retreat of the Republican Party.
Sputnik

"[Moscow] is not, will not, be our friend… As long as their government has the values that it has, and as long as it conducts itself the way it does internationally," Haley said Thursday, as quoted by the CNN broadcaster.

Haley said that she believed Moscow to be involved in the attempts to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election, calling it "an outrageous thing."

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Moscow has repeatedly refuted allegations of interference in the US election, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling them groundless and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointing out that the claims had never been backed up by any evidence.

The US ambassador to the United Nations also accused Moscow of backing the Syrian government, protecting Iran from more thorough legal inspections and illegally occupying Ukrainian territory.

"Russia hates all of those moves, and most of them did not exist before this administration… And that's the way it should be, until Russia starts to act like a responsible country," the US Ambassador to UN concluded.

Ukraine and a number of Western countries do not recognize the decision of the Crimean residents to rejoin Russia. More than 90 percent of the region's inhabitants voted for the reunification in March 2014, shortly after the new government came to power in Kiev.

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Since 2014 the relations between Washington and Moscow have been strained, with the US imposing sanctions on Russia. Both sides characterized the current state of bilateral relations as the worst since the Cold War. However, Moscow continues to call for mutually beneficial cooperation with the US on equal terms.

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