Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview that Russia has not lost the desire to improve its relations with the US.

“Everything can be done if there is a desire. We have never lost this desire,” Putin told Pavel Zarubin, a journalist of Russia’s state TV and radio company VGTRK, on Sunday while answering a question about the prospects for improving Russia-US relations, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Russian President was responding to a question about the possibility of normalising relations between Russia and the United States, as reported by the Russian news agency TASS.

Putin said Russia is ready to build relations with other countries, provided such efforts do not compromise Russian interests.

“If we establish relations with someone, we will do so only based on the interests of the Russian state,” he said.

Putin drew from the 19th and 20th centuries to emphasise the changes in international relations and recalled that after the Crimea War of 1853-1856, when a series of restrictions were imposed on Russia, then-Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire Alexander Gorchakov sent out a letter with the following words: “Russia is not angry. Russia is concentrating.”

“Gradually, as Russia was concentrating, it returned all its rights in the Black Sea as well, grew stronger and so on,” said Putin.

Last week, Russia issued an advisory for its citizens warning them not to travel to the US and other Western countries, claiming they could be “hunted” by the authorities in those states, Al Jazeera reported.

The outlet cited Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as describing US-Russian relations as “on the verge of rupture.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

–IANS