"The Trump administration has not been formed, Trump has not been sworn in yet, so let us wait for January 20 at least," Dolgov said.
"We, if we cannot solve [issues] under [Barack] Obama, we will start work with the new administration literally from January 21… to address these and other numerous stalled issues on the bilateral agenda, which arose, I stress, due to the fault of the US side," he said when asked whether the Foreign Ministry planned to appeal to the US administration in the case of Russian businessman Viktor Bout and pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, held in US prisons.
Dolgov added that the prospects for resolution of issues connected with Bout and Yaroshenko with the Obama administration are minimal.
Bout was arrested in Bangkok in 2008 in a joint operation between Thai and US authorities, who accused him of conspiring to kill Americans by allegedly agreeing to supply Colombian militants with weapons. Moscow has said that the case has been politicized and has repeatedly called on Washington to release the Russian citizen, who is serving a 25-year sentence in the United States.
Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring to import more than $100 million worth of cocaine into the United States, was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and subsequently extradited to the United States. In April, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that arguments made to reverse Yaroshenko’s conviction lacked merit. In a March letter to Sputnik, the jailed pilot said the court ignored a lot of evidence that proved US prosecutors and drug enforcement authorities had fabricated the case against him.
