Russia assured yesterday Friday that diplomatic relations with the United States are not sacred and it will not defend them at all costs. It will not be Moscow that will take the initiative to break them, but the confiscation of Russian assets frozen due to the war in Ukraine could completely sever diplomatic ties with Washington.
The Russian authorities are ready for any scenario, Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said in an interview with the Interfax agency.
And he explained that “in themselves, diplomatic relations are not a totem to which one must bow, they are not a sacred cow that everyone cares for. “We will not act proactively to scrap them (…), as we understand that Russia and the United States have a central role in maintaining international security and strategic stability.”
Russia, which sent its army to Ukraine in February 2022 in what it called a “special military operation,” does not want a total severing of diplomatic ties with the United States, Riabkov himself stated on November 9 on the RTVI television channel. . Yesterday, however, he admitted to Interfax that such a breakup could occur because of “the confiscation of assets, further military escalation, many other things.”
“I say this so that there is complete clarity: we are prepared for any scenario, and the US should not harbor the illusion (…) that Russia is clinging with both hands to diplomatic relations,” he stressed.
The idea of ??using frozen Russian assets, some $300 billion, or their yield to help Ukraine in its reconstruction is being discussed in the West. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov assured on Thursday that if that happens, Russia will respond “in an absolutely symmetrical way” and pointed out that there are also enough frozen European assets in Russia that could be confiscated.
Yesterday the Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, said that the confiscation of frozen Russian assets would be a serious blow to the global financial system and that Russia will not leave alone the country that takes this step.
Peskov took the opportunity yesterday to deny The Wall Street Journal after the New York newspaper published that the death of mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash last August was caused by a small bomb placed under one of the wings, and that he ordered it. Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council and one of the closest men to Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Peskov, this information is just “cheap fiction.”
