Russia says US not ready to fully restore work of embassies
MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Wednesday said Washington was not yet ready to remove barriers to the work of their respective embassies, as efforts to normalise relations between the two countries stall.
Russia and the United States sought to reset diplomatic and business ties after Donald Trump returned to the White House promising a swift end to the conflict in Ukraine, but the US leader became annoyed with both sides after no quick ceasefire was reached.
'Despite some progress, the American side is not yet ready to seriously address the difficulties hampering the embassies' work,' Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists, including AFP, at a briefing.
Relations between the two nuclear powers fell to the lowest point since the Cold War after Russia sent troops into Ukraine and the West slapped Moscow with unprecedented sanctions.
Both sides have been operating their embassies with skeleton staff for years due to diplomatic expulsions.
Moscow and Washington held two meetings in a bid to restore their fractured diplomatic ties, but neither resulted in a breakthrough.
Earlier in June, Russia's foreign ministry said Washington had cancelled a third round of diplomatic talks with Moscow and that it hoped the pause would not 'last for too long'.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
2 hours ago
- The Star
Study: Children of divorce earn less, at risk of teen births and jail
In the United States, children whose parents divorce when they are age five or younger have reduced earnings as adults and increased chances by young adulthood of teen pregnancy, incarceration and death, according to a study released recently. After a divorce, a household's income typically is halved as a family splits into two households, and it struggles to recover that lost income over the ensuing decade. Families after divorce also tend to move to neighbourhoods with lower incomes that offer reduced economic opportunities, and children are farther away from their non-custodial parent, according to the working paper by economists at the University of California in Merced, the US Census Bureau and the University of Maryland. The three events – loss of financial resources, a decline in neighbourhood quality and missing parental involvement because of distance or an increased workload required to make up for lost income – accounted for 25% to 60% of the impact divorce has on children's outcomes, the study said. 'These changes in family life reveal that, rather than an isolated legal shock, divorce represents a bundle of treatments – including income loss, neighbourhood changes and family restructuring – each of which might affect children's outcomes,' the economists wrote. Almost a third of American children live through their parents' divorcing before reaching adulthood, according to the study. Many children of divorce have reached the heights of professional success, including former President Barack Obama and vice-president JD Vance, who lamented that divorce was too easily accessible during a 2021 speech at a Christian high school in California. Declining trend The US divorce rate has been on a decline for the past decade and a half, going from over 10% in 2008 to about 7% in 2022, according to the Census Bureau. The economists' study can't show the emotional impact of divorce, but some children of divorce said it resonated through adulthood, no matter what age they were when it happened. Brandon Hellan, 54, said it took him until his mid-30s before he felt like he could commit to getting married and having children. He thinks his parents' divorce when he was in his early 20s played a role since it felt at the time like an immense betrayal. 'I really think my parents' divorce made me put up these walls and treat relationships like they were rentals, temporary,' said Hellan, who lives in the St. Louis area and wasn't connected to the study. While the study shows the negative impacts of divorce, it can't show what families' lives would have been like if parents had stayed together, said Philip Cohen, a University of Maryland sociologist with no ties to the study. 'Probably nobody can tell better than the parents facing the conditions of the marriage and the opportunity for divorce,' Cohen said. 'I believe parents are aware divorce may have harmful consequences for their children, and make difficult judgements about what is in their own best interest, as well as the interest of their children.' Different conclusions Previous academic studies reached different conclusions about the impact of divorce on children. Some argued that unhappy marriages harm children by exposing them to conflict between their parents and that, generally, divorce is a better option for both parents and children. Other studies said divorce leads to reductions in financial resources, the time parents have to spend with their children and the emotional stability of their offspring. Yet other studies concluded that divorce has a minimal impact one way or another. A big shortfall in reaching any conclusions has been a lack of data. But the authors of the new study said they overcame that limitation by linking data from federal tax records, the Social Security Administration and the Census Bureau for all children born in the US between 1988 and 1993. The tax data traced marital histories and income of the parents and the census data provided information about households and outcomes from childhood to adulthood. The study compared outcomes among siblings by the amount of time a childhood was spent with divorced parents. It found that children whose parents divorced when they were age five or younger had a 13% smaller income by age 27, but there was little or no impact if the child was older than 18 when their parents divorced. A parental divorce increased the chances of teen pregnancy if it took place before the child turned 15. But that effect disappeared by age 20, as did the impact of any divorce on the chances of incarceration. There also was no noticeable effect on a child of divorce getting married by age 25, according to the study. The impact from divorce was similar across demographic groups, the study found. – AP
The Star
3 hours ago
- The Star
All NATO, including US, 'totally committed' to keeping Ukraine in fight, Rutte says
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte holds a press conference ahead of a NATO summit, in The Hague, Netherlands June 23, 2025. REUTERS/Yves Herman BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The whole of NATO, including the United States, is "totally committed" to keeping Ukraine in the fight against Russia's invasion, alliance Secretary General Mark Rutte told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. Speaking at the end of a summit of NATO leaders in The Hague, Rutte also said nobody in NATO was naive about Russia and all alliance members "have more or less the same assessment" of Moscow. U.S. President Donald Trump's more conciliatory stance towards Russia in his efforts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine has prompted questions about U.S. commitments to Kyiv. "The whole of NATO, including the United States, is totally committed to keep Ukraine in the fight, to make sure that if there is a peace deal, that peace deal - or the ceasefire - will be lasting, will be durable," Rutte said. He said the clear direction of travel was that Europeans would be responsible for more of the military aid to Ukraine. But he said the United States would still be "very much involved with intelligence-sharing, with also practical military support" including potentially air defence systems. "I think there will still be a huge, big American involvement," Rutte said. The Trump administration has also told Europeans that they must take over primary responsibility for their own security, rather than relying on the United States through NATO. Rutte said this process would be possible as Europeans had committed to spending more on defence, and it would be "well-organised" to avoid any gaps that Russia could exploit. "I've had these discussions in Washington over the last couple of months," he said. "For years, the U.S. has said 'we have to pivot more towards Asia'. Now that the Europeans are stepping up, that also makes it possible," he said. "You will see that what the U.S. is delivering to NATO in terms of capabilities will gradually come down. But there's also total clarity from the U.S. that they don't want any capability gaps to emerge in Europe," Rutte said. (Reporting by Andrew Gray;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Sandra Maler)
The Star
5 hours ago
- The Star
Trump considers more Patriots for Ukraine, says Putin "has to end" the war
U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attend a meeting on the sidelines of NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. THE HAGUE (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump indicated on Wednesday he will consider providing more of the Patriot missiles that Ukraine needs to defend against mounting Russian strikes, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin "really has to end that war". His remarks came after a 50-minute meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the sidelines of a NATO summit in The Hague. Both leaders described it as a positive step in a conflict that Trump described as "more difficult than other wars". During a press conference in which he celebrated his own diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, Trump said the Patriots were "very hard to get" but that "we are going to see if we can make some of them available". Zelenskiy mentioned air-defence systems but it was not immediately clear whether Trump was referring to more missiles or complete batteries. Trump also left open the possibility of providing more military aid to Kyiv, which has suffered grinding Russian advances on the battlefield in recent months. He had previously shown no sign of resuming the donations of weaponry to Ukraine that his predecessor Joe Biden had instituted after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. Asked directly whether the U.S. would contribute more funding to Ukraine's defence this year, Trump said: "As far as money going, we'll see what happens." The U.S.-made Patriot batteries are critical to shooting down the Russian ballistic missiles that have increasingly rained on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks. Dozens of people have been killed over the past week on the capital Kyiv and the southeastern regional capital of Dnipro. Zelenskiy said before Wednesday's meeting that Ukraine was willing to buy more Patriots if the U.S. was unwilling to donate them. He said the talks with Trump were "long and substantive". "Ukraine is ready to buy this equipment and support American weapons manufacturers," Zelenskiy wrote on X. "We also discussed the potential for co-production of drones. We can strengthen each other." Trump added that he would soon speak once more with Putin, adding: "Look, Vladimir Putin really has to end that war." MORE FORMAL LOOK FOR ZELENSKIY Zelenskiy wore a dark, suit-style jacket to the meeting, in contrast to the more informal military-style garb he was criticised for wearing at a disastrous White House meeting with Trump in February. He has since worked to rebuild relations with the Trump administration, whose overtures to Russia have concerned Kyiv. However, he had to settle for attending the pre-summit dinner on Tuesday evening rather than the main meeting on Wednesday, which backed the big NATO-wide increase in defence spending that Trump had demanded. Unlike last year, this year's summit declaration contained no mention of future NATO membership for Ukraine. While the statement denounced what it called the long-term threat posed by Russia to European and Atlantic security, it did not directly blame Russia for the invasion, as previous declarations have. (Reporting by Yuliia Dysa in Gdansk, Jeff Mason and Katharine Jackson; writing by Dan Peleschuk; editing by Alison Williams, Alexandra Hudson, Mark Heinrich and Kevin Liffey)
