Moscow | Russia expects “nothing good” from future US President Joe Biden, believing that its foreign policy will be guided by “Russophobia”, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov in an interview published Wednesday.
“We’re not expecting any good, that’s clear. It would be strange to expect good from people who, for many of them, have made their careers on Russophobia, spilling bitter on my country, ”he told Russian news agency Interfax. , after new tensions between the two countries around a gigantic cyberattack in the United States attributed to Moscow.
Mr. Riabkov is in charge of relations with the Americas and the non-proliferation of armaments, particularly nuclear weapons, and as such remains one of the main interlocutors of the US State Department.
According to him, Moscow should only have a “selective dialogue” with the United States, targeting only “subjects that interest us”.
Otherwise, we need a policy of “total containment of the United States, in all directions, because the American policy towards Russia is deeply hostile.”
The Russian official ruled that the ball was in the American court for a revival of bilateral relations and that Russia did not intend “to initiate contacts with Biden’s transition team”.
These remarks come a few hours after the American president-elect promised to respond to the gigantic cyberattack attributed to Russia which targeted his country, by lambasting Donald Trump, accused of inaction.
For Mr. Riabkov, the outgoing American administration leaves “a heavy legacy”, having adopted multiple sets of sanctions against Russia, in particular because of hacking and interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“Everything is going from bad to worse. It was characteristic of the last four years, and we don’t have the feeling that this trend is going to change, ”he said.