Russia takes Obama’s message to Putin positively

The Kremlin has taken US President Barack Obama’s message to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin quite positively. “US National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon has brought a message of Barack Obama. It is written in a constructive tone and has a number of proposals promoting bilateral dialogue and cooperation,” Russian president’s aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists on Monday. “Some ideas of the message have already been voiced, others have new elements our country will thoroughly study and respond to,” he said. According to Ushakov, the message “also embraces problems in the military political area, including those of missile defence and nuclear arsenals.” “There are some proposals in the trade and economic sphere. Notably, they are rather concrete proposals, which develop the idea voiced by President Putin at his meeting with Obama in Los Cabos, when he stressed that it was necessary to create a kind of ‘safety net’ to be used in difficult moments when the political situation posed some problems,” the Kremlin official said. In his words, despite the recent exchange of “sanction lists” between Russia and the United States, the meeting between Putin and Donilon was characterized by a “rather positive atmosphere, as is the character of the signals the Obama administration is sending us.” “As for us, we shall follow these positive signals, and the president stressed that. More to it, we have always been ready to develop our relations, to expand them without any restricitions. All the restrictions are imposed only from the other side, there are no restrictions from our side,” Ushakov stressed. “Moscow understands the importance of these relations and the importance of their impacts on the international situation,” he noted. “We understand that such impacts may have a decisive role in the long run.” Earlier on Monday, Putin joined the talks in the Kremlin with the participation of Donilon. The Russian side was represented by Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Russian president’s aide Yuri Ushakov, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov, and officials from the Russian Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service. The US delegation included US Ambassador in Moscow Michael McFaul, State Department Assistant Secretary for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Rose Gottemoeller, and Under-Secretary of Defence James Miller. In the morning, Donilon met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “As for the state of bilateral relations, we have heard from both Thomas Donilon and US Secretary of State John Kerry, with whom I met several days ago, that they are fully aware that a series of factors has a negative impact on bilateral relations. Among such factors are the Magnitsky list and the condition of adopted Russian children (another case of torture has recently been exposed in Texas), and the problem of abduction of Russian citizens,” Lavrov said. “John Kerry and Tom Donilon said the Obama Administration realizes that such things have a serious irritating effect on bilateral relations. They said they would take measures to remove these ‘irritants’. Let’s see, we’ll judge by deeds and not by words.”