Probe to haunt relations between Russia, US in 2018

will suffer as their interests are irreconcilable.

The disagreements between the two countries are “intractable”, said a report published in November gathering views of scholars from the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Russian International Affairs Council.

They also thought Russia and the US are not likely to emerge as close partners, as the two perceive threats in each other’s policies and actions.

According to Andrei Suzdaltsev, a Russian expert, Moscow now practically has no “freedom of maneuver” regarding diplomatic interaction with Washington, which offered preconditions that “are certainly unacceptable for Russia, like abandoning Crimea”.

“The US is still demonstrating such, I would say, an ‘indulgently colonial’ approach, which leaves us without a possibility to maneuver,” said Suzdaltsev, deputy dean of the Faculty of World Economy and Politics of Russia’s Higher School of Economics Research University.

He expressed concern about the fact that almost all communications between the two countries were blocked, except for some “situational contacts”. There is also no mutual trust for dialogue to restart, Suzdaltsev said.

US-Russian relations are also believed to be affected by shifting global power dynamics in a broader context.

Besides the four-year-old Ukraine crisis, disagreements over the Syrian crisis and the anti-terrorism war played vital parts in the bitter feud.

Although the Russian intervention in Syria and regional anti-terrorism war saw a gradual drawdown in 2017, Moscow kept two military bases in Syria, the Hmeymim air base and the Tartus naval base, which, according to Russian Defense Ministry, will guarantee Syria’s future stability.