MOSCOW, January 16. /TASS/. The new US administration of Donald Trump will have no less interest in the Ukrainian issue than the outgoing government, Director of the Institute of US and Canada Studies Valery Garbuzov told TASS.
"It is naive to believe that the Ukraine problem will be resolved very quickly after the new administration takes office because contradictions are so deep that they are tied in several knots," the expert said.
"The situation is similar to the situation in Syria: agreements seem to have been reached but nothing is being fulfilled properly," he added.
The Ukraine issue will be additionally discussed by the Trump administration as "contradictions are noticeable inside the defense and foreign policy blocs on this issue," Garbuzov said.
However, despite the recent calls by Trump and his nominee for the post of the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to supply arms to Ukraine, "the new administration will be interested in the Ukrainian issue no less than Obama," the expert said.
"It was obvious that the outgoing administration had lost interest in the Ukraine events because they developed differently than the Americans had expected," Garbuzov said.
New US administration’s attitude to NATO and Europe
In an interview with the German publication Bild and the UK newspaper The Times published on Sunday, Trump said that NATO had problems and the alliance was an obsolete organization as it was designed many years ago.
"Yes, the alliance was created long ago and has become obsolete in some regard but it has also become modernized in some other regard," the expert said.
"It will be very difficult, proceeding from Trump’s words, to liquidate all this, or fully change the NATO structure," he added.
Most likely, all of Trump’s statements will be gradually adapted to political realities, the expert said.
Middle East
"Everyone understands that the Syrian conflict has to be resolved somehow," the expert said. "This cannot go on for long and Trump understands this as well."
According to the expert, it is difficult to "find approaches to the Syrian conflict." "The Americans have their own position and now it turns out that the new US president is not close to the Russian position either," he added.
"The closeness can only be found in the fact that there mustn’t be the Islamic State terrorist grouping [outlawed in Russia]. But each wants to consider this territory as the sphere of its influence, in particular, both the United States and Russia," the expert said.
"Any solution of these problems implies additional issues leading to foreign policy, geopolitical influence on the region and so forth," he added.
"This is already a cause for negotiations, although this is not a quickly solvable problem. That is why, they [the issues related to the Syrian settlement] can’t be solved so easily because these are not some individual issues of the struggle against terrorism," the expert said.