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| Ex-Russian Ambassador Kislyak never spoke to Flynn about sanctions – interview | Ex-Russian Ambassador Kislyak never spoke to Flynn about sanctions – interview |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Now-retired Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak said that the main topic of his conversation with former US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was counter-terrorism. The talks were transparent and never touched upon sanctions, he added. | Now-retired Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak said that the main topic of his conversation with former US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was counter-terrorism. The talks were transparent and never touched upon sanctions, he added. |
| “I do not comment on our daily contacts with our colleagues. Secondly, I had instructions not to discuss sanctions. We never discussed sanctions with anybody. And I assure you, I have honestly followed the instructions,” Kislyak told Rossiya-24. | “I do not comment on our daily contacts with our colleagues. Secondly, I had instructions not to discuss sanctions. We never discussed sanctions with anybody. And I assure you, I have honestly followed the instructions,” Kislyak told Rossiya-24. |
| “Sanctions aren’t our thing,” the retired diplomat said. “We don’t discuss or bargain about sanctions, because we believe they were implemented in an illegal, politically aggressive way to begin with.” | |
| While it would be difficult to lift the newly-imposed restrictive measures, Kislyak does not believe the US and Russia are back to the Cold War. | |
| “No, it’s not the Cold War,” he said. “The problem in our relations, as I have tried to say, is in the sense of absolute exceptionalism of the Americans and their purported right to tell everyone else what is good and what is bad.” | |
| The former Russian envoy to Washington blasted the sanctions, which he believes are aimed at impeding normal economic cooperation between Russia and the US. | |
| “The economic sanctions, which we have been lately discussing a lot, were designed so that it will be very difficult to cancel them under the current conditions in America,” Kislyak said. | |
| “The whole mechanism is made so that the US law would not give the opportunity to develop normality in economic relations with our country,” he added. | |
| Commenting on his conversation with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Kislyak said they were openly discussing “the simplest things.” | |
| “We spoke about the simplest things… But the communication was completely specific, quiet, absolutely transparent. There were no secrets, at least on our part,” he stated. |