Kier Giles, a leading specialist in Russian geopolitics at London’s Chatham House, explained that the West “persistently tried to reset relations with Russia” – and that this will only make the fragile situation worse. Speaking to Express.co.uk, Mr Giles said: “The West persistently tries to reset relations with Russia – to start all over again on a clean sheet and hope that things will be better this time. The persistent lesson of all the previous attempts at doing this is that it simply does not matter.
“What would be far more stable and less dangerous would be to, rather than encourage Russia into thinking that it can get away with all of its hostile actions and will be forgiven and everyone can get back to business to business as usual…
“Instead, we need to recognise that, actually, there is this contradiction and conflict in terms of what Russia and the West actually want.
“That it’s not going to be possible to resolve.
“Living with the differences instead of pretending that they don’t exist would be a far more stable basis for the relationship.”
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Mr Giles’s colleague, Mr James Nixey, reiterated that Russia is undoubtedly one of the world’s most “major” powers and demands “serious attention”.
Speaking in the wake of continued Russian belligerence over Crimea and just over a year after the infamous Skripal poisonings in Salisbury, Russia expert James Nixey told Express.co.uk that the nation remains inarguably “one of the top five” powers in the world.
Mr Nixey, based at London’s Chatham House, said: “The fact of the matter is – you can’t really argue about it – it is a major power in all sorts of ways.
“Unless you’re just talking about the economy, in which case it’s 13th by GDP and fifth by PPP.
US President Donald Trump suggested stepping up a dialogue with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin when the two met in Osaka, Japan, Interfax news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Sunday.
Trump and Putin met for an hour and a half on Friday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan for the first time since their initial formal meeting in Helsinki a year ago.
Little is known of what the two discussed in Osaka. Peskov said on Friday that Trump showed readiness to start a dialogue with Russia on strategic stability and disarmament, and the leaders also discussed the issue of Ukrainian sailors detained by Russia in late 2018.
“The American president quite distinctly showed his intention to step up the dialogue. As for Putin, he has long been talking of his desire to go along the path of normalisation of relations,” Peskov said, according to Interfax.
Peskov also said that Trump appeared to be unhappy with the scale of trade turnover between the United States and Russia, and instructed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin directly at the meeting to work with his Russian counterpart Finance Minister Anton Siluanov on overcoming trade hurdles.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that the issue of Ukrainian sailors detained by Russia in 2018 had dominated his talks with Donald Trump at the G20 summit but no decision on the sailors’ fate had been made yet.
The Russian navy captured the Ukrainian sailors and their three vessels in the Kerch Strait, which links the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, on Nov. 25, 2018, after opening fire on them.