MOSCOW, May 5. /TASS/. Contacts between Moscow and Washington are held when necessary, including on a high level, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Russia’s Channel One on Thursday.
"Channels do exist, and contacts do take place, including, when necessary, at the high political level," he said.
"The question is not whether those contacts exist or not, it is about our adversaries in Washington, who have gotten in the habit of persuading their subordinates in Europe, of even persuading themselves to a certain extent, that signals coming from Moscow are an element of ‘disinformation campaign,’ as they have been putting it for many years," the Russian diplomat continued. "The people who repeat it every day over and over again were subjugated by their own cliches, by their own propaganda."
He described US response to Moscow’s signals that followed the Ukrainian drone attack as "a disregard for the basics of foreign policy and diplomacy."
In the early hours on Wednesday, Ukraine sent two drones to attempt a strike on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence in the Kremlin, according to the presidential press service. Russian military and security personnel promptly disabled them. Putin was unharmed and is carrying on with his work as usual. The Kremlin regards the incident as a premeditated terrorist attack and an assassination attempt on the head of state. Russia reserves the right to retaliate how and when it sees fit.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said statements by Ukrainian and US officials that they weren’t involved in the drone attack on the Kremlin were laughable. Moscow knows that Kiev chooses the means and targets for its strikes exactly as it’s told by Washington, he said.