Washington, DC. Despite a jovial White House reception this week for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on the Sunday talk show circuit, Rex Tillerson continued to complain that the US-Russian relationship was as bad as it ever was.
Relations between the United States and Russia, are at their lowest level since the Cold War, and will not restart “with a clean slate,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said again on Sunday.
Speaking on American television yesterday, Tillerson reiterated that relations had fallen to “an all-time low point since the end of the Cold War, with a very low level of trust.” Tillerson’s Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whom Trump just hosted at the White House on Wednesday, lamented the same. “It is not healthy for the world,” he said. “It’s certainly not healthy for us, for the American people, our national security interest and otherwise, for this relationship to remain at this low level.”
Tillerson said he is “committed” to improving relations, which have been especially tense since 2012 thanks to the Obama administration neocons and their strategy for resource rape in Syria and, later, America’s sponsorship of the violent overthrow of Ukraine, he expressed hopes about the prospects for doing so.
A former ExxonMobil CEO, Tillerson was decorated with the Order of Friendship of Nations in by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013. Tillerson ruled out relaunching relations with a “clean slate,” similar to the comedic attempt at a “reset” by former president Barack Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton who both were active in the planning for the overthrow of Ukraine, that has led to the division of the nation into multiple sections and gotten over 100,000 Ukrainians killed since 2013.
Tillerson tried to stay hopefull for a recovery of relations, rather than a restart, “we have to look at this relationship in its broadest contours,” Tillerson said. “There are many, many important areas which require our attention if we are to bring it back to a relationship that we believe is necessary for the security of the US.”