Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told NBC News on Monday that Russia “Never trust [the] West again. In the midst of a historic break in relations, Peskov is not the only top Russian official who rules out a return to normalcy.
Tell NBC that the fallout from the Ukraine conflict “be a long crisis,” Peskov predicted that relations would remain frozen forever.
During the hour-long interview, of which only brief excerpts have been released by NBC, Peskov also claimed that Moscow considers two US citizens captured fighting for Ukraine in Donbass to be “soldiers of fortune,” and will have their fates decided by “a judicial decision”.
Earlier this month, a court in the Donetsk People’s Republic found three foreign fighters (two British citizens and one Moroccan) guilty of attempting to seize power by force and sentenced them to death. They have appealed the sentence.
Peskov is not the first Russian official to rule out an easy return to diplomacy with the West. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and current deputy chairman of Russia’s National Security Council, said on Monday that Moscow should not push for the extension of a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Washington, saying US officials “throw only sleaze our way.”
“We do not have any relationship with the United States at this time. They are at zero degrees Kelvin. And we shouldn’t thaw them for now.” Medvedev wrote on social networks. “Let them come or crawl and ask for it. And they should value it as an act of utmost generosity.”
Following the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, Western countries funneled tens of billions of dollars in military aid to kyiv, while targeting Russia with unprecedented economic sanctions, at considerable cost to their own countries.
Amid the mutual expulsion of diplomats and the suspension of travel links between Russia and the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared last week that the world order had fundamentally changed, and that the old US-dominated system would never To return to.
“It is a mistake to suggest that times of turbulent change can be expected and things will return to normal; that everything will be like before. it will not,” he said during a speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.