ST. PETERSBURG, June 3./TASS/. The US partners have done a lot of things lately, but Russia is not giving way to emotions ahead of a summit meeting of the two presidents, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday.
Commenting on all summit meetings is within the competence of the Russian presidential administration, she noted, expressing readiness, however, to speak about Russian-US relations.
"When we are commenting on bilateral Russian-US relations, all moods and emotions emerge not because we have certain guidelines that we open and say "You know today is Thursday, and this is our mood for today, while tomorrow, on Friday, it will be a bit different".
"We don’t have these guidelines, we have reaction to the moves made by the partners, and our own agenda of initiatives," she said. "It’s another matter that all constructive things that we proposed have found no response, and much of what was being done was blocked by the United States. This is what Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said when he noted that the Americans had done everything for a degradation of bilateral relations, led them into deadlock, and he also used stronger expressions speaking about this American policy," the spokeswoman went on to say.
Moods "are formed solely depending on concrete developments on the ground," she noted. "We, among other things, don’t succumb to emotions even after mood has been spoiled somehow. We say that we are open to a mutually respectful and equal dialogue, we have an experience of such interaction. We have already learned how to react to unfriendly actions, doing this on a regular basis, regretfully, since our American partners have done a lot of things lately. The choice is not ours, however," the diplomat said, stressing that Russia remained committed to a dialogue.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Joe Biden of the United States are scheduled to meet in Geneva on June 16. This will be the first Russian-American top-level summit since Putin met with former US President Donald Trump in Helsinki in July 2018. The Kremlin announced that the two leaders plan to "discuss the conditions and prospects for further fostering Russian-US relations, strategic stability matters as well as pressing issues on the international agenda, which include cooperation in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and regulating regional conflicts." On May 30, Biden stated that he intended, among other things, to raise the issue of human rights.