Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin has said he does not rule out the restoration of contacts between intelligence representatives of Russia and the United States.
"I don't rule out that we will restore cooperation at the highest level," Naryshkin said in Dushanbe at the session of the Council of the Heads of Security Services and Special Services of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) member countries. Asked about whether the issue concerns possible contacts between the intelligence chiefs of the two countries, he said, "It is possible."
Naryshkin highlighted that the SVR has wide partner relations with the intelligence services of other countries and that they have never stopped, in particular with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He said that when U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo served as CIA Director, it was a time of "fruitful development of our contacts and the exchange of both intelligence and analytical information."
"Then, due to domestic political events in the U.S., due to the strengthening of the domestic political crisis, these contacts subsided," TASS cited him as saying.
"Though I admit that we continued to share operative information, especially anti-terrorist one," Naryshkin said.
