Russia say US midterms won’t improve ‘bad’ relations with Washington

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The Kremlin has said that the US midterm elections will not improve the “bad” relations between Moscow and Washington, as it dismissed allegations Russia was meddling in the US vote, reports say.

“These elections are important, but it’s not necessary to exaggerate their importance in the short and medium-term for our relations,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as telling reporters.

“These elections cannot change anything essential. Relations still are, and will remain, bad,” he added.

He said that Moscow had grown so accustomed to hearing people say that Russia interferes in US elections it was not paying any attention to new rounds of allegations.

It comes after a key Vladimir Putin ally admitted the day before the election that Russia was interfering in US votes and said that they “will continue to interfere”.

On Monday, Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin revealed that he had interfered in American elections – the first admission from someone blamed by the US for attempting to influence US politics.

“We have interfered (in US elections), we are interfering, and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do,” Mr Prigozhin said, according to comments posted by the press department of his catering company Concord.

The statement was released on VKontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, according to Reuters.

Mr Peskov also told reporters it was too early to talk about a dialogue with the US on extending the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty after reports claimed that Moscow and Washington were set to hold talks on the renewal of nuclear arms control.

A report by Bloomberg suggested that the US and Russia were preparing to meet in the coming weeks to discuss the resumption of inspections of nuclear weapons facilities under the New START treaty.

The US continues to reiterate its support for Ukraine, which the Biden administration said it would support for as long as it takes.

It comes as Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine will not give up even a centimetre of land in Donetsk where heavy battle is underway between the country’s troops and Russia.

“The situation is difficult on the entire front. In some areas, brutal positional battles continue, as before, and it is especially difficult - also as before - in the Donetsk region. The activity of the occupiers there remains at an extremely high level - dozens of attacks every day,” he said in his nightly address.

Russian troops are suffering “extremely large-scale losses, but their order has not changed - to reach the administrative border of the Donetsk region”, he said.

“We do not give up a single centimetre of our land there. And I thank all our heroes who are holding positions in Donbas,” Mr Zelensky said.