Putin Says US-Russia Relations Are in ‘Deep Crisis,’ as Moscow’s Senior Diplomats Depict It as a Hot Conflict

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a Security Council meeting via a video link in Moscow on April 5, 2023. (Gavriil Grigorov/ Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the relations between the United States and Russia are “in a deep crisis,” while Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that Moscow is now in a “hot conflict” with Washington.

Putin made his remarks while addressing new U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy on Wednesday. Tracy was among 17 ambassadors who presented their diplomatic credentials to Putin at a televised ceremony in the Kremlin.

U.S. support for a revolution in Ukraine in 2014 ultimately led to the current situation where Russia and Ukraine are in conflict, Putin said.

“Dear Madam Ambassador, I know that you may not agree with my opinion but I must say today that the use by the United States of such tools as support of the so-called color revolutions, support of the coup of Kyiv in 2014, ultimately led to the current Ukrainian crisis and additionally made a negative contribution to the degradation of Russia-U.S. relations,” Putin said.

He was referring to an armed coup in February 2014 in which anti-Russia, pro-European Union (EU) factions overthrew then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government, which wasn’t against Russia, and which had refused to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the EU in late 2013.

Anti-government protesters guard the perimeter of Independence Square, known as Maidan, in Kiyv, Ukraine, on Feb.19, 2014. (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

In response, a vast majority of people in Crimea voted in a referendum in March 2014 to reunite with Russia and secede from Ukraine. The referendum was condemned by the United States and the EU, with the latter deriding it as “illegal and illegitimate.” Following the vote, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

Both Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbas region also declared independence from Ukraine in April 2014 in response to the February coup. Shortly after the breakaway, the Ukrainian military was deployed to fight the rebels in the Donbas. More than 10,000 civilians have died since the fighting began. Ukraine accused Russia of being responsible for the escalation of the conflict, but Moscow has denied any involvement.

“Relations between Russia and the United States, which directly affect global security and stability, are in a deep crisis,” Putin said Wednesday, addressing Tracy. "Unfortunately, fundamentally different approaches to a formation of the modern world order are at its heart.

Putin took a similar line with the new EU ambassador, Roland Galharague, telling him “the European Union initiated a geopolitical confrontation with Russia.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov gestures during a press conference following talks with his U.S. counterpart on soaring tensions over Ukraine, in Geneva, on Jan. 10, 2022. (Eloi Rouyer/AFP via Getty Images)

On the same day, Ryabkov, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, said on the Sputnik radio station in response to a question that he believes Moscow and Washington have already passed a Cold War period, reported Russian state-owned Tass news agency.

“Now we are in the phase of a hot conflict with the United States,” Ryabkov added. “We are witnessing the direct involvement of that country in a hybrid war with Russia on various fronts.”

Ryabkov said Russia’s opponents were “playing with fire in the truest sense of the word.”

“They ought to be aware what any encroachment on our sovereignty, our territorial integrity and our statehood [will entail],” he said. “If this trend persists, we will be ready to take all measures and to use all means at our disposal in order to defend ourselves and ensure that our sovereignty be guaranteed.”

He also said that recent talk about the risk of a nuclear conflict is a “rather dramatic issue,” adding that Russia has repeatedly stressed that “there can be no winners in a nuclear war and that it must not be unleashed.”

“But the way our American opponents are recklessly, provocatively, and in many respects absolutely carelessly moving up the escalation ladder, the way they are blinded by their absolutely absurd certainty about their ability to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia makes one doubt their mental faculties and their common sense,” Ryabkov said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a meeting in Moscow on March 30, 2023. (Maxim Shipenkov/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Speaking separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow needed to maintain relations with Washington even though American supplies of weapons to Ukraine meant “we are really in a hot phase of the war.”

Lavrov told state television that Russia had not yet lost hope that the United States “will wake up to reason [and] will resume some kind of dialogue.”

Nikolai Patrushev, a close Putin ally who chairs Russia’s Security Council, told Tass news agency that “with the assistance of the U.S. and its allies, Kiyv is intensifying its terrorist activity” in four regions of Ukraine that Moscow said last year it was formally annexing.

The secretary of Russia's National Security Council Nikolai Patrushev attends an expanded meeting of the Russian Defence Ministry Board at the National Defence Control Centre in Moscow on Dec. 21, 2022. (Sergey Fadeichev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia says it was forced to intervene in Ukraine to stem Western interference that was becoming a threat to its security. But the West and Ukraine have dismissed this as a baseless pretext for a war of conquest.

Putin also urged Denmark to support Russia’s proposal to establish an independent international commission to investigate the blasts last September that ruptured the Nord Stream undersea pipelines bringing gas from Russia to Germany.

“Russia is open for constructive partnerships with all countries without exception. We are not going to isolate ourselves from anyone, we don’t have predetermined or hostile intentions towards anybody.”

Relations between Russia and the West were already strained before it began its “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022 but have plunged even further since then.

Putin previously cited the Azov battalion’s neo-Nazi elements in his justification for invading Ukraine in February 2022, calling for the “denazification” of the region.

The Azov battalion, a volunteer paramilitary organization, was formed in 2014 during the Donbas War in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian forces and pro-Ukrainian forces, following the February 2014 coup.

The Azov battalion was later formally incorporated as a regiment in the National Guard of Ukraine, but not without controversy over the group’s neo-Nazi ties and the use of the wolfsangel symbol, which was also used by Nazi forces in Germany during World War II. The Azov battalion denies being fascist, and Ukraine says it has been reformed from its radical nationalist origins.

Reuters contributed to this report.