“The recovery of Russian-American relations is still a long way off,” Ambassador Alexander Darchiev told TASS, adding that the rapprochement with Moscow was being slowed by the so-called US “deep state” and anti-Russian “hawks” in Congress.

“I can confirm that the next negotiations of the delegations will take place in the very near future in Moscow,” Darchiev was quoted as saying.

The war in Ukraine triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.

Senior diplomats in both Moscow and Washington told Reuters in 2024 that they could not recall relations ever being worse.

The administration of US President Donald Trump casts the Ukraine conflict as a proxy war between the United States and Russia, and Trump has repeatedly warned of the risk of it escalating into a world war.