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Ukrainian issue does not dominate Russian-US political agenda, expert says

At the same time, the expert acknowledges the Ukrainian factor as a very important indicator

© Alexander Scherbak/TASS

MOSCOW, December 7. /TASS/. Ukraine is not in the center of the Russian-US political agenda, senior research fellow with the Center for Caucasus Problems and Regional Security at the MGIMO university Nikolay Silaev has said.

"I would not expect an apocalypse in Russian-American relations," he said, commenting on the prospects of further deterioration of relations between Russia and the US. "And I wouldn’t expect Ukraine - which, despite its importance for Russia and the US, is on the periphery of the world political processes - to be the center of this process."

At the same time, the expert considers the Ukrainian issue a very important indicator of the state of relations between the US and Russia.

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Expert warns Kiev will wreck Minsk accords due to feud amongst Ukraine’s elite

"Ukraine is an important indicator," he said. "When it is possible to not just normalize, but improve relations, this improvement will start with some secondary issues: these are not Syria or Ukraine, but, for example, issues related to prevention of various incidents, be it [events] in the Middle East or in the Eastern Europe, that is issues that can be easily agreed upon."

"The fact that American partners call Ukraine the main issue on the Russian-American agenda shows that the US is still not ready to improve Russian-American relations," Silaev affirmed.

At the same time, the expert noted that politics regarding Ukraine remains the point in which the positions of the major European Union countries and the US coincide. "This is an issue of consolidation and agreement between the Western Europe and the US, and neither side is ready to doubt this agreement - eased on other issues - here as well," he noted.

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