MOSCOW, July 23. /ITAR-TASS/. Trade turnover between Russia and the United States in the first five months of 2014 increased by 16% year on year, thus showing American business’ interest in bilateral cooperation, the Russian Trade Mission in the US said on Wednesday.

“The current trade and economic relations between Russia and the United States have been complicated by Washington’s sanctions. Nevertheless, there are the interests of economic agents and concrete companies and the implementation of joint projects,” a Trade Mission representative said.

“If we look at the trade turnover figures, we will see that it increased by 16% from January to May,” he said. “This is a good pace and our main task is to keep it up even though it’s hard to make projections for further development of the situation under sanctions”.

“We are strongly against self-isolation, and cooperation with the US is more of a pragmatic nature to us. The sanctions undoubtedly affect the interests of business, not only Russian but also American business which seeks to develop partnership (with Russia) and sees its prospects in Russia,” the official said.

“By February of this year we had made very serious plans for cooperation with the US and had done a great deal of work to identify new strategic areas of joint work, improve the legal framework and take our cooperation to a qualitatively hew level. It’s a pity that all this has now been put off for reasons beyond our control,” the official said.