Kremlin: Obama’s desire for closer cooperation with Russia unknown in lower tiers of government

(Interfax – MOSCOW, May 15, 2013) A Kremlin aide has claimed that proposals by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for cooperation between American and Russian intelligence services “haven’t been brought down to the executive level” by the White House.

“These impulses, these signals from above somehow haven’t been brought down to the executive level on the American side. It is no less surprising that some of the members of the personnel of the American Embassy in Moscow were unaware of this attitude of the two leaders,” Yury Ushakov told reporters on Wednesday.

Ushakov was commenting on a scandal in which a third secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow was detained in Russia’s capital on Monday night on suspicion of spying.

The aide said the Kremlin and White House had sent out a clear signal that Russian and U.S. intelligence service “should work constructively, efficiently and intensively, and work not against each other but with each other.”