- What has remained from our relations with the United States? The diplomatic property is still under arrest. OK, we retrieved Butina from there. Yaroshenko and Bout are in prison. Our Consulate in San Francisco is closed.
"According to the Vienna Convention, the diplomatic property of a state in the host country is inviolable. The premises of the mission, their furnishings, and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment, or executive actions. After the 2016 presidential election, the United States accused Russia of influencing the course of the election campaign. President Obama signed a decree expelling 35 Russian diplomats as well as closing their colleagues' access to two diplomatic residences — in Maryland and New York. The ground for this was that they were allegedly used for intelligence purposes. Russia took retaliatory measures. American diplomats were expelled, and the embassy was deprived of the residence in Serebryany Bor and the warehouse on Dorozhnaya Street. At the beginning of September 2017, at the request of the State Department, the Russian consulate in San Francisco, the trade mission in Washington and part of its premises in New York were closed. In 2018, Trump, in support of the UK in the Skripals case, expelled another 60 Russian diplomats and blocked access to the Consulate General in Seattle. All this triggered a retaliatory Russian response".
Sergey Lavrov, Foreign Minister of Russia: They haven't allowed us to visit any of the premises contrary to promises. We keep looking for practical ways we can proceed in that matter. When talking to Mike Pompeo, I raise this issue every time. We are exploring the possibilities of litigation. US justice is a complicated matter for reasons you can guess. I'm glad Maria Butina came back home. We saw how happy she was. And we saw how strong this person is, despite 18 months of psychological and physiological pressure in the condition of the prisons she was in for a long time. Several dozen Russians are under trial and investigation in the US, some have already received sentences, like Bout, Yaroshenko, and Seleznyov. All our citizens, especially the ones I mentioned, are kept in far from ideal conditions from the point of view of the requirements of international law and international agreements.
"Russian Maria Butina was arrested in Washington on July 15, 2018. She was charged with two counts. Butina conducted activities in favor of Russia in the United States not having the status of a foreign agent. Under US law, one must be registered with the Department of Justice. In addition, Butina allegedly participated in a conspiracy to such unregistered activities. For multiple offenses, the young woman faced up to 15 years in prison. In December, Maria agreed to conclude a deal with the investigation, partially pleading guilty to one of the charges. In April 2019, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Her lawyers didn't appeal the verdict and said they expected her to return to Russia in November. The judge granted the prosecution’s motion for Butina’s deportation after serving her sentence. In May, the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced that Butina would be released on November 5. Then the prison term was reduced to October 25".
- The Foreign Minister didn't abandon them?
- We will never stop working in this direction. We achieve something even if it's not much. For example, the family came to Bout and could talk to him for quite a long time. But basically, all of this is illegal. Any suspicions that the United States has about our citizens that they might be involved in illegal activities must be reported via channels established by the bilateral consular convention. People shouldn't get kidnapped. Bout was extradited from Thailand in violation of the laws of Thailand itself. Yaroshenko and Seleznyov were just kidnapped from Liberia and the Maldives respectively. As for the remainder of our relations with the United States, we managed to restore consultations on counter-terrorism. Between our military, there is a channel on so-called deconflicting in relation to Syria. There is a dialogue between diplomats on how we could help resolve the situation in Syria. Although we are in Syria at the invitation of the legitimate government. The United States keeps saying they respect the resolution but you see how they treat Syria. They enter and leave whenever they deem fit. They now don't care about ISIS. They care about oil and that Syria wouldn't assert control over it. Our Ministry of Defense spoke in detail and based on factual documents about what the United States is doing with oil. Oil is exported for processing outside Syria. At the expense of revenues from this oil, the United States supports loyal armed groups and so on and so forth.
Also, we cooperate with them on the situation in Afghanistan. Pakistan also took part in it at some point. We're also interested in involving Iran in this. We also cooperate quite well on the North Korea issue and on the Korean Peninsula in general. We have not yet observed systematic progress on initiatives that Russia has repeatedly put forward, including during the summits of Putin and Trump. I mean strategic stability, for example, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, I mean the conversation about all the problems that arise in the sphere of strategic stability of not only nuclear but also other types of weapons of mass destruction, non-nuclear strategic weapons, the problems of the militarization of space, the problems of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. We propose to include this in the general discussion about all aspects of strategic stability. This is our stance we have clearly conveyed to the United States. Sadly, we haven't seen any comprehensible answers. The only thing they say that they want to involve China in this. What has this got to do with us? If China agrees, we'll be glad to expand our negotiations. However, then it's not clear what the UK and France should do about it. And now we're talking about official nuclear powers. There are states which possess nuclear weapons unofficially. So if it's all about the fact that we have to persuade China to join, then we aren't going to do that. China said its nuclear forces structure differs from that of Russia and the United States. And this is true. They aren't going to join negotiations at this stage. And we respect this attitude.
So, there's no progress in the Russian-American dialogue on the crucial topic of strategic stability. There's also no progress in another systematic initiative brought up by our president during his second meeting with Trump. I mean the creation of a business council that would consist of five to six top officials of private companies on each side. In November, we were made aware that there might be some progress. Nothing is being done with the creation of an expert council, which was discussed when Pompeo was in Russia this May He then reacted positively to the idea of attracting political scientists to assist diplomats and official representatives of Russia and the United States in seeking agreements that would allow at least some progress in strategic stability.
- Just like it was in the 70s and 80s.
- A world with rules that mean powerlessness for everyone but one is undesirable for all of us. If Europe toes the mark set by the United States on the issues I've mentioned, like the chemical weapons organization and a number of other areas, then they act on a case-by-case basis. They do not understand that this bomb will be replicated, including in those situations where they will not need to abandon the international legal foundation and receive external rules imposed. Such situations are quite predictable. The same happened to Libya when it was destroyed with the use of terrorists in order to overthrow Qaddafi. When Qaddafi was overthrown, the terrorists went to Mali. Then France, openly admitting that it had armed the terrorists, began to ask for support in the fight against these terrorists in Mali.
- So here we stand... Thank you, Sergey Viktorovich.
