Interfax: Russian ambassador to US: No link between McFaul departure, reset policy

(Interfax – February 6, 2014) The upcoming resignation of U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has nothing to do with the end of the reset policy in Russia-U.S. relations, Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak said.

“I did not know when Mike decided to resign but I know that he wanted to return to his favorite work at Stanford, he is a professor. I heard his lectures. He is a good professor. I know that he loved that job very much,” Kislyak said in an interview with the Voice of Russia radio.

One should not link McFaul’s resignation to the end of the Russia-U.S. reset policy, the ambassador said. “I think this is a too high-sounding phrase. It does not reflect the essence of our relations, things that we do,” the Russian diplomat stressed.

“I happened to interact with him here, when he was working at the White House, and I must say that I have respect for our work in that period. As to his activity in Moscow, I think it would be incorrect for me, the Russian Ambassador to the United States, to assess colleagues working in Moscow. His superiors will decide how efficient or inefficient he was. Anyway, I know – I have spoken to him – he regards the years he has spent in Moscow, no matter how complicated he may think they have been, as one of the most interesting periods in his life,” the diplomat said.

In his words, old stereotypes often prevail in the U.S. media reports about Russia. “Sometimes you feel like you grow young again when you read local newspapers,” Kislyak remarked.

The Russian ambassador thinks that the U.S. media attitude toward the Sochi Olympic Games is an illustrative example of a combination of these stereotypes, “which absolutely dominate the media and are so disappointing sometimes that I do not think any of them [the journalists] will read in their professional life such reports about their own country, which deems itself a leader in terms of press impartiality.”

McFaul said on February 4 he would leave the position of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia after the Sochi Olympic Games.