Moscow-Washington ties in ‘crisis’: Russia recalls US envoy

Russia on Wednesday said it would recall its ambassador to the United States for consultations, the latest sign of growing tensions between Moscow and Washington. The move to bring Anatoly Antonov to Moscow was announced shortly after US President Joe Biden accused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of being a “killer”, and warned he would “pay a price” for alleged election meddling.

Biden’s comments came as a declassified US intelligence report linked Putin to influence operations aimed at helping Donald Trump in last November’s presidential election. Russia denies the longstanding allegations of meddling as baseless.

The Russian embassy in Washington said in a statement that Antonov will leave the US on Saturday and would discuss “ways to rectify Russia-US ties, which are in crisis” upon his arrival in Moscow. It added that “certain ill-considered statements of high-ranking US officials have put the already excessively confrontational relations under the threat of collapse”.

In a separate statement on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said: “The main thing for us is to determine the ways in which the difficult Russian-American relations that Washington has led into a dead end in recent years could be rectified. “We are interested in preventing their irreversible degradation if the Americans recognise the risks involved.”