The video “Thoughts for the Road,” featuring some of the 60 expelled diplomats, was posted on the US Embassy Twitter page after they had left in accordance with the retaliatory steps the Russian Foreign Ministry took over the Skripal case. The clip opens with the address in Russian of ex-Chief of US trade mission Michael Lally.
“As we are getting ready for our journey back home, we are thinking over the results and achievements of our work here in Russia. As I represent the US Trade Ministry, we have been working very close with Russian and US companies. Now, when we are leaving ahead of a term ending, I can fully appreciate the importance of our cooperation and what it means. It is about our working together, creating jobs not only in Russia, but also in the US”, he said.
The former trade envoy and his fellow expelled colleagues, called for a dialog between two countries despite their ups and downs in relations.
“My colleagues and I are sure about the importance of the relations, as we work in different fields besides business, such as culture, education, and tourism. We need to restore the dialog; it’s an important target for us,” concluded Lally, who studied here in Russia some 30 years ago.
There are staffers from the Political Department of the Embassy, the Ambassador’s Office and Press Office among the speakers. They talked not only about their work, but also their first experiences in Russia, their roots of interest in the country, and their friends from here. The clip is concluded with one of them saying “Vse budet Khorosho!”, which translates in Russian as “Everything is going to be fine!”
WATCH Expelled US Diplomats Reportedly Leave Russia at Night
This March the US, as well as dozens of UK partners, expelled Russian diplomats after Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who'd worked for UK intelligence and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, as London accused Moscow of the attack.
The Russian Foreign Ministry expelled 58 diplomats from the US Embassy in Moscow and two employees from the US Consulate General in Yekaterinburg; it closed the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg in response to the earlier the US expulsion.