US, EU Dialogue on Combating Terrorism With Moscow Frozen, Russian Foreign Ministry Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The United States and the European Union have frozen dialogue on the fight against terrorism with Moscow under far-fetched pretexts, the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department for New Challenges and Threats chief, Vladimir Tarabrin, said in an interview with Sputnik.

"Cooperation between Russia and the United States in the field of anti-terror is now basically frozen," Tarabrin said, adding that "Washington, under a far-fetched pretext, unilaterally, decided to suspend profile meetings within the high-level dialogue under the auspices of the foreign ministries of Russia and the United States, which were held in Vienna in 2018-2019 and were useful for both sides."

He told Sputnik that a similar situation has unfolded with the European Union. According to Tarabrin, the last round of EU-Russia consultations on anti-terror measures was held in October 2019.

"For our part, we proceed from the fact that we need such a dialogue no more than the West does, and if someone is not ready for it due to their own phobias and distorted ideas about its equal basis, then this is no longer our problem," Tarabrin told Sputnik.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov noted in February that given the contradictions in the security field between the West and Russia - even before the start of a special military operation in Ukraine - there were already no signals about the resumption of the format of interaction between Moscow and Washington on anti-terror efforts.

"So far they (meetings) have been terminated at the initiative of the Americans. So far, therefore, there are no signals about the resumption," Syromolotov told reporters.

Last year, Russian anti-terror officials said bilateral meetings between security agencies were previously held in an interdepartmental format, but such a dialogue was interrupted at the initiative of the Americans.