RIYADH, February 18. /TASS/. Moscow and Washington have agreed to appoint their ambassadors as soon as possible, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after a meeting with senior US officials in Riyadh.
He expanded on the agreements that were reached during the talks. “The first one, and probably the most pressing and difficult one, is to ensure the soonest appointment of the Russian ambassador to the United States and the US ambassador to Russia. We need to remove the hurdles that have been placed in front of our missions by years of work by the [former US President Joe] Biden administration, making things very difficult for them,” he said.
According to Lavrov, the two countries’ deputy foreign ministers “will soon set a meeting to discuss the need to remove these artificial barriers in the work of our embassies and other missions of Russia in the United States and the United States in Russia.”
During these contacts, the countries’ senior diplomats will not focus on “the concrete manifestations of these barriers but will try to tackle systemic issues to once and for all put an end to problems that hamper the development of normal diplomatic relations,” he said.
According to the top diplomat, among the problems created by the previous administration were the endless stream of expulsions of diplomats that forced Russia to respond in kind, the seizing of Russian property and others. “Last but not least is the problem of bank transfers, where they are seeking to restrict us as well,” he added.
