November 16th marks the 82nd day of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Washington. Experts believe that current US-Russian relations are at their lowest point since 1933.
The head of the department of international organizations and global political processes of Moscow State University, Andrei Sidorov noted that "deterioration of our relationship, if you have noticed, one can say, goes back to 2012, approximately. The apogee was reached during this administration, it was the signing of the new START 3, and the deterioration happened afterwards (Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton exchanged the instruments of ratification of a Treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States on the Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms on February 5th 2011 at the 47th Munich Security Conference). And regardless of what sort of larger events occurred. The bigger the event is, the stronger the rate of decline. "
However, according to the expert, ‘’if in the past year President Obama described Russia as a threat somewhere between ISIS and Ebola, than now this is hardly repeated. That is, in other words, the United States, at the moment, doesn't have a fairly strong position on some issues, for example Syria, Assad. At least, there is no direct denial. On the other hand, Russia also, in this case, I would say, at least some Western analysts say, that Putin seized the initiative, mainly due to the migration crisis in Europe. That is, to a certain extent, the policy of the United States over the last few months is reactive "
Sidorov said that Washington must respond to certain actions in Moscow: "They must determine. By and large, they either are fighting ISIS or not. In other words, in this case, Russia's policy forces the United States to take a position. Moreover, if we look at the internal situation in the United States, the election campaign is already being felt more and more. Here, even people like Trump, for example, not the main favorite, the famous showman in the United States, but his position is substantially different compared to his Republican colleagues, who aspire to nominate a candidate for the post of President of the United States, and to the Democrats. In other words, they need to adopt some sort of new, show the voters a new, different position, which is different from the rest. But it is necessary, of course, to do it and follow through. Like in 1964 when Barry Goldwater declared that if he came to power a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union is possible. Something like that can be declared. And you can go the other way, declare about negotiations with Russia "
In his opinion, relations between Moscow and Washington the relations are stably bad, nevertheless, the key word is– stably, ‘’the rolling down a slope, which was observed in 2012, with greater or lesser intensity, in my opinion, has stopped. Right now we are walking along a straight line"
