US says Russia should not close its embassy, underscores need to maintain diplomatic ties

Despite the soaring tensions between Washington and Moscow amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, US asked Russia to not close the US embassy "since the world's two most powerful nuclear powers must continue to communicate". US envoy to Russia, John J. Sullivan, told news agency TASS that Washington and Moscow should not just cut diplomatic ties. This comes as  Kyiv and its Western sponsors claim to be fighting for Ukraine's existence in the face of a reckless imperial-style territorial grab that has murdered thousands, displaced more than 10 million people, and turned vast swaths of the nation into desolation. 

It is to mention that Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the invasion of Ukraine as a watershed moment in Russian history.

"We must preserve the ability to speak to each other," Sullivan told TASS in an interview.

He further warned against removing Leo Tolstoy's publications from Western bookstores or refusing to play Pyotr Tchaikovsky's music. Despite the Cold War's crisis, spy scandals, and brinkmanship, connections between Moscow and Washington have not been broken since the US established links with the Soviet Union in 1933. However, Russia now declares that its post-Soviet relationship with the West is gone and that it will shift eastward.

US might close its embassy only if it became unsafe to continue its work: Sullivan

Last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken joked that he wanted to dedicate Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" to Putin. Responding to the remark, Sullivan said, "We also will never break up entirely."

When TASS questioned if the analogy indicated that the embassies could be shuttered, Sullivan responded, "They can - there is that possibility, although I think it would be a big mistake. The only reason I can think of that the United State might be forced to close its embassy would be if it became unsafe to continue its work." 

Further, Russia's foreign ministry has summoned the Moscow bureau chiefs of US media outlets to discuss the consequences of the US' hostile actions on Monday. Tsarina Catherine the Great's refusal to assist the British empire when America proclaimed independence paved the way for the first diplomatic interactions between the US and St Petersburg, Russia's imperial seat at the time. Following the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognise Vladimir Lenin's revolutionary government, and the US embassy was closed in 1919. Relationships were not restored until 1933.

Image: AP