The current standoff between Moscow and Washington came about because of American support for the 2014 coup in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
“Relations between Russia and the US, on which global security and stability directly depend, are unfortunately going through a deep crisis,” Putin told 17 ambassadors who gathered at the Kremlin to formally present their credentials. This crisis is “rooted in fundamentally different approaches to the formation of the modern world order,” he added.
Addressing the US envoy Lynne Tracy, the Russian president apologized for somewhat disrupting the “gracious atmosphere” of the credentialing ceremony.
“I cannot but say today that the US use of such foreign policy tools as ‘color revolutions’, and support in this regard for the coup d’état in Kiev in 2014, ultimately led to the current Ukrainian crisis and made an additional contribution to the degradation of Russian-American relations,” Putin said.