MOSCOW, December 22. /TASS/. Moscow will not leave the United States’ further anti-Russian sanctions unanswered, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS on Tuesday.
"This situation can be characterized by such proverbs as ‘a wise man changes his mind, a fool never will’ or ‘you might as well be talking to a brick wall,’" he said. "Being absolutely aware that all their attempts to influence us through sanctions are doomed to failure, colleagues from Washington nevertheless are sticking to their false opinion. It is a ‘shot in one’s own leg’ from the point of view of Russian-US relations, which have been driven to a dead end by the current Washington administration."
"It will not stay unanswered. The answer will come without fail, maybe not immediately and not in the way that might be expected," Ryabkov stressed. "And our colleagues in Washington should not be surprised why it happens that way."
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According to the Russian diplomat, Washington has once again demonstrated its unwillingness to recognize the reality, to see the cause-and-effect relations in the context of the situation in Ukraine, to admit the importance of complete implementation of the Minsk agreement, which they [the Americans] keep on calling for all the time. "The central and most important thing in this context is to exert influence on Kiev," he stressed, adding that instead, the Americans kept on laying their own fault at somebody else’s door.
"This is the road to nowhere. Driving the situation into a state our relations are now in through Washington’s fault, those who are responsible for such decisions have once again demonstrated that they are incapable of learning any lessons," Ryabkov said.