The American Embassy in Moscow refused to guess Russia’s next steps to reduce the number of diplomats and notes that the deterioration of bilateral relations is not in the interests of the countries. About it the press Secretary of the US Embassy Maria Olson said RIA Novosti.
“As we have said, the US hopes that by reaching out to the Russian desire to get parity (in number of employees of diplomatic missions), we can avoid a further exchange of responses and progress in achieving the goals set by our leaders: fix relations between the two countries and enhance cooperation in areas of mutual interest. We hope that the downward trend in the relationship came to an end,” said Olson, and added that the new US Ambassador to Russia gave to understand that he is looking for practical possibilities for moving forward in relations between the two countries.
On Wednesday, the Director of the Department of North America of the MFA of Russia Georgy Borisenko said that Moscow was considering various options of response to the situation around the Russian departmenet in the United States and does not exclude that will demand from Washington “to establish actual parity in the number of employees of diplomatic missions”. According to him, Moscow is considering the opportunity “to reduce the number of employees of the US diplomatic mission in Russia to 300 or below.”
In early September, at the request of the American authorities was closed by the Russian Consulate General in San Francisco and sales offices in Washington and new York. After that, the buildings raided. Moscow has described the actions of an unfriendly step and promised to go to court.
In late July Russia ordered to reduce the U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia to 755 people, leaving 455 employees.