By Lidia Kelly
(Reuters) -Russia’s envoy to the U.S., a Kremlin hard-liner, was returning to Moscow on Saturday, state media reported, with the top of his time period coming at a time of essentially the most hostile relations between the 2 nations in a long time.
“Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov is concluding his Washington assignment and heading to Moscow,” TASS state information company cited the international ministry as saying.
The Siberia-born Antonov, 69, a profession diplomat, was seen as a hawk who was nonetheless able to hanging compromises. Head of the Russian mission in Washington since 2017, he stated in July his project was coming to an finish.
There was no point out of who would exchange the envoy, thought of a military-style negotiator. His stance on Russia’s struggle in Ukraine has proven stalwart help of President Vladimir Putin’s actions.
“It is obvious to us that the enemy will be defeated and victory will be Russia’s,” Antonov stated on Saturday in an unrelated publish on the Telegram messaging app, commenting on Russian forces capturing Ukraine’s mining city of Vuhledar.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a particular navy operation, accusing Washington and its NATO companions of waging a hybrid struggle in Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies say Moscow’s aggression is an unprovoked imperialistic try to seize land.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered the most important confrontation between Moscow and the West for the reason that 1962 Cuban missile disaster when the Soviet Union and U.S. got here near nuclear struggle.
Antonov, who served as deputy defence minister throughout a interval which coincided with Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014, was a topic of European sanctions when Putin named him Russia’s envoy to the U.S.
He graduated in 1978 from the primary diplomatic coaching floor of the Soviet Union, the Moscow State Institute of Worldwide Relations. Antonov spent the following three a long time climbing by means of the international ministry ranks, in response to his biography on the embassy’s web site.
Earlier than shifting to Washington, he was often known as a shrewd arms management negotiator who had headed Russian delegations to various worldwide and strategic weapons talks.
In an August interview with TASS, Antonov stated Russia was prepared to contemplate a pact with Washington on arms management.
“My tactics for conducting negotiations are very simple: you and I need to take a piece of paper and write down what you want and what I want,” he stated.
“Take the two sheets of paper and try to find something in common there, even if it is minimal, but start from this when solving problems.”
