Russian Response to Biden Won’t End with Recall of Ambassador

March 18 , 2021 (EIRNS)—In the wake President Joe Biden calling President Putin a “killer” in a set-up interview by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov has been recalled to Moscow, and will leave Washington on March 20, according to a statement today by the Russian Embassy. The statement, quoted by TASS, reported: “The current situation stems from Washington’s deliberate policy. As a matter of fact, Washington has been deliberately driving bilateral cooperation to a dead end in the recent years. The U.S. administration’s non-constructive policy towards our country is in the interest of neither Russia nor the United States and certain reckless statements of U.S. senior officials pose a threat of utter collapse to bilateral relations, which are already excessively confrontational.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the “Solovyov Live” YouTube channel that Antonov will stay in Russia for consultations for as long as it takes. “The consultations will take place not only in the Foreign Ministry, but also in various government agencies. How long will it take? Exactly as long as the consultations themselves will take,” she said.

Deputy Speaker of the Russian Federation Council (the upper house of the Federal Assembly legislature) Sen. Konstantin Kosachev commented on Biden’s statement on Facebook: “Such remarks cannot be tolerated under any circumstances and will inevitably raise tensions between our countries. The recall of the Russian ambassador to the U.S. for consultations is a prompt, adequate and the only sensible response in such a situation. I suspect that if the U.S. fails to provide an explanation and apology, it won’t end there.”

“This is a fault line. These boorish remarks have killed off all expectations that the new U.S. administration will pursue a new policy towards Russia,” Kosachev wrote. According to him, “evaluations like these from a statesman of such a high rank are generally unacceptable.” The Russian senator stressed that the remarks had come from the President of the country “that drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes, according to expert estimates. As a result, the deaths of more than 500,000 people have been linked to U.S. actions since 2001. Could you comment on that, Mr. Biden?” Kosachev demanded to know.