Washington: After years of ups and downs Russian President Vladimir Putin in a New Year’s message to U.S. counterpart Barack Obama seek the cooperation between their countries in order to meet the international challenges.
Russia and the United States are capable of making a real input into supporting global stability, resolving some of the most difficult international problems.
The Russian military intervention in Ukraine, which began in late February 2014, prompted a number of governments to apply sanctions against individuals, businesses and officials from Russia and Ukraine.
Russia has responded with sanctions against a number of countries, including a total ban on food imports from the EU, United States which caused economic damage to a number of EU countries.
The Kremlin reported that Putin’s New Year’s greetings to Obama as saying the “relations between Russia and the United States are crucial to ensuring global security”.
Putin was also quoted as saying that both countries would “successfully take on new challenges and threats” across the world if they were to engage in a “constructive dialogue”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Moscow to try to narrow differences with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over the role of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in any political transition in Syria.
Russia is one of Assad’s staunchest allies and launched a campaign of air strikes to support his forces against insurgents on Sept. 30. It says only the Syrian people and not external powers should decide his political fate.