WASHINGTON, May 11. /TASS/. Russia and the United States will restore bilateral ties after all but the path to this recovery will not be easy, Frank Cohn, a US World War II veteran who took part in the encounter of the Soviet and US troops at the Elbe River in April 1945, told TASS.

"I think, eventually, somebody will wake up to it and say: ‘Now this is silly, we got to really come together.’ We don't have equal goals, you know, we have different goals. Well, that's fine. But there're certain things that are the same. And we should at least be able to cooperate on the things that are the same for us," retired US Army colonel Cohn said, commenting on the current state of the Russian-American ties and their prospects.

"Well, it's really very pathetic that we can't come to some accommodation. Because there are so many things that are the same for us, you know, like the environment," the 98-year-old veteran pointed out. In his opinion, climate change is indeed one of the global issues demanding interaction between Moscow and Washington. "That's the kind of thing that we should really be able to get together on," he asserted.

The veteran answered in the negative to a question as to whether the US-Russian ties had been ruptured for good. "I think it's repairable," he added.

"But it will be a difficult road," Cohn said. However, he insists that there must be a rapprochement. "It's not a healthy situation," he concluded.