MOSCOW, June 23. /TASS/. Russia is ready to conduct an equal dialogue with the United States and is against the US lecturing on democracy building principles, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law Konstantin Dolgov told TASS on Tuesday.
"The Russian-American presidential commission included the civil society group, and there were plans to continue its work," Dolgov said. "But then we got the general answer that the United States was ‘so concerned’ about human rights in Russia that decided to freeze this group among the first — that’s the alogism."
"We’ve never shed and don’t shed any tears over this," the diplomat said. "By the way, the Russian and US civil societies are communicating."
He said that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has recently commented on the general situation in relations with the United States. "We’ve received signals from the United States that they are willing to resume dialogue with us one way or another," the Russian Foreign Ministry commissioner said. "We are fully ready for such a dialogue."
The diplomat said Russia had very many problems with Washington in the human rights sphere, in particular, the situation with arrests of Russians in third countries at American requests, the situation with Russian children adopted by US families.
"Dialogue is always a two-way street. The ‘teacher-pupil’ formula will not work anymore," he said. "It will be only an equal dialogue and we are ready to conduct this kind of dialogue."
"And if they want to lecture us on democracy building ways, let them lecture students at some American university," Dolgov said.