Urooj Nazir
Russia said tensions with the US are “teetering on the verge of rupture” and warned its citizens not to go.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova advised Russians on Wednesday to “avoid travel to the United States, Canada, and with a few exceptions, the European Union” during the Christmas season.
She warned that anybody who traveled could be “hunted” down by American officials.
“In the context of the increasing confrontation in Russian-American relations, which are teetering on the verge of rupture due to the fault of Washington, trips to the United States of America privately or out of official necessity are fraught with serious risks,” said Zakharova.
She did not specify which EU nations were not subject to the travel advice.
Even Though travel warnings between the US and Russia are not new, diplomats in Washington and Moscow claim that tensions over the crisis in Ukraine have made ties between the two nations worse than they have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Russia’s lowering of its nuclear threshold and Ukraine’s use of US and British missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory last month further strained relations.
Additionally, both sides accuse one another of holding civilians on unfounded charges.
Russia is unwilling to compromise
Donald Trump, the next US president, has declared that now is Vladimir Putin’s “time to act” and encouraged both parties to agree to an immediate détente.
The president-elect demanded an “immediate ceasefire” in a social media post on December 8.
In contrast to the Biden administration, which has made it a point to avoid appearing to pressure Kyiv for an immediate truce, the ceasefire call is the most obvious attempt to date to end one of the world’s main crises before he assumes office on January 20.
In response to Mr. Trump on Wednesday, Ms. Zakharova stated that anyone who believed that Moscow was prepared to compromise on Ukraine had “either a short memory or not enough knowledge of the subject.”
If there is to be peace, she continued, Mr. Putin’s own suggestions for resolving the conflict—which include Russia seizing four Ukrainian areas and Ukraine refusing to join NATO—must be carried out.
It follows remarks made by Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin that his nation was almost done with Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s SVR foreign intelligence agency’s official journal quoted Mr. Naryshkin as saying that “the situation on the front is not in Kyiv’s favor” and that Russia had the initiative in every area.
He asserted earlier this week that “we are close to achieving our goals, while the armed forces of Ukraine are on the verge of collapse.”
