"Worse than the Cuban missile crisis": Medvedev assessed the relationship between Russia and the West

As Medvedev said in an interview with Kommersant, in some aspects, relations between Russia and the West are now worse than during the Cuban missile crisis.

“I'm not talking about a situation like the Cuban missile crisis, when it was hanging by a thread. But in some respects, the current situation is worse. And it is worse because our partners proceed from the premise that Russia can be neglected", - the Dozhd TV channel quotes Medvedev's statement.

Medvedev is convinced that the West considered the USSR as a strong power, but now many countries assess the Russian Federation as a “dying country” and treat it “with disdain”. According to Medvedev, this attitude towards Russia is wrong.

“I don’t want to say that one side is always to blame for everything, that we are white and fluffy, and they are always dirty and bad. But in this situation we were definitely not the initiators of this kind of confrontational spiral”, - the deputy head of the Security Council is convinced.

Relations were especially aggravated after the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and the attempt on the life of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, Biden openly called Putin a "killer" in a TV interview. He also accused Russia of meddling in American elections.

Medvedev expressed the hope that the deteriorated relationship can be returned to a positive channel.

The first meeting of the Presidents of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, is scheduled for June 16 in Geneva. An invitation to participate in it was sent to Putin by the American president.

The sides are expected to discuss a wide range of issues in Russian-American relations at the meeting. Biden announced in advance that he was extremely concerned about the human rights situation in Russia. The American president intends to take measures to improve the human rights situation in the Russian Federation. The Kremlin, on the other hand, is skeptical about the results of the upcoming meeting, noting that one should hardly expect a "reset" in relations with the United States.

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a number of statements severely criticizing the position of the "Western partners" in a number of key areas of international policy, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the growing military threat from NATO, in connection with which he proposed to create about 20 additional military units in the Western Military District to repel possible aggression.