MOSCOW, February 27. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin said that he still had a positive impression of his meeting with US counterpart William Burns last November in Turkey and greatly respected him.
"I still retain a positive evaluation of the nature and results of the meeting with my colleague William Burns, the meeting held in Ankara last November. Indeed, the meeting was substantive, was held in a very comfortable setting and I retain great respect for my colleague William Burns both as a really experienced diplomat, a skillful diplomat and as a colleague who has maybe not yet had a lot of experience working as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency," he told reporters on Monday replying to a request to comment on Burns’ remarks saying that their meeting was "pretty dispiriting" and that Naryshkin’s attitude was "defiant."
"You know, the meeting lasted two and a half hours and this alone indicates that the meeting was unlikely to last so long if one of the sides was defiant, rude and obnoxious," the SVR chief noted. "No, I repeat, it was a very good, calm conversation," he added.
Naryshkin emphasized that during those talks with Burns, he was relying on the opinion of the Russian people. "As to where such assessments came from on the part of my esteemed colleague - possibly, from the realization that in this conversation, in these talks, I was relying not only on my opinion, not even that much on my opinion but on the opinion of Russia’s millions-strong nation," he concluded.