SAN FRANCISCO /California/, September 6. /TASS/. Russia’s Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov sees no prospects for returning Russia’s seized diplomatic property in the near-term.

"Regrettably, I’m reporting to you after six years that we could not return the property that was seized from us by the Americans for absolutely no reason. If you ask me whether this is possible in the future: well, never say never, and we know this phrase. However, on the other hand, it appears that we will not have this property back in the near future," he said during a consular reception for Russian compatriots in San Francisco, California.

Staffers of the Russian Embassy in Washington’s consular department are holding a visiting session in San Francisco. This type of work has become regular over the past few years, after Russia had to close its consular offices on the Pacific Coast of the United States following a demand from Washington.

Around six years ago, on August 31, 2017, the US administration took a new round of unprecedented measures to restrict the activities of Russian diplomatic and consular missions in the United States and, in fact, further curtail bilateral ties, the Russian ambassador said earlier. He demanded that Washington "stop the bacchanalia" and return every single piece of diplomatic property in the United States stolen from the Russian Federation.

Alexander Darchiev, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s North American Department, said In an interview with TASS last August, that the actions of US government agencies regarding Russian diplomatic property contradicted international law, primarily the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, under which the premises of diplomatic missions, their furnishings and other property located there were immune from search, requisition, arrest and other enforcement actions. Darchiev recalled that the US had earlier illegally seized six Russian properties through a ‘raider seizure’: villas in Maryland and New York, the Trade Mission building in Washington, the Consulate General's office building and the Consul General's residence in San Francisco (California), as well as the Consul General's residence in Seattle (Washington). According to Darchiev, Russia demanded the return of these facilities and compensation for the damage caused.