In the negotiations between the United States and the Russian Federation on the normalization of the issuance of diplomatic visas, there have been positive trends. On December 6, the Consul General of Russia in Houston, Alexander Zakharov, told RIA Novosti about this.
According to him, in this matter, Moscow can hope for larger and more significant results.
“I would like to say that positive trends have been outlined in the last month. We hope that this will lead to some more significant and larger results, ”Zakharov said during the 23rd World Petroleum Congress in Texas.
According to him, positive progress was achieved thanks to the talks with the participation of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Vienna.
In addition, as a representative of the Russian diplomatic mission said, in connection with the departure of many Russian diplomats from the United States, the amount of work for the remaining employees of the Russian Consulate General in Houston has increased significantly.
“Now we have to work with 13 states. This is a huge population, a large number of our compatriots, a large volume of tasks that we face. We are trying to cope, ”added a senior Russian diplomat.
On December 5, US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan said the United States could not increase its diplomatic presence in Russia because US diplomats were not issued Russian visas. According to him, the current situation can be described as a “visa deadlock”.
Prior to that, on December 3, a spokesman for the US State Department said that Russia and the United States had made progress in recent days on bilateral issues related to diplomatic visas. He stressed that diplomacy is the only responsible way to resolve a potential crisis, therefore, it is necessary to have open channels of communication between the two states.
On December 1, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Maria Zakharova, said that by January 31, 2022, employees of the US Embassy, who have been in Moscow for more than three years, should leave the country. She stressed that such a decision is not the choice of the Russian side.
On November 27, the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, announced that 27 Russian diplomats and their families would be forced to leave the United States on January 30, 2022. The same number of specialists from the diplomatic mission of the Russian Federation will leave the country in six months – on June 30.