Russia said on Wednesday that relations with Washington were so confrontational that Russian citizens should not visit the United States, Canada, and some EU countries in the coming weeks because they risked being “hunted” down by US authorities.
Russian and US diplomats say the relationship is worse than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to intentional nuclear war due to a confrontation over the Ukraine war.
“In the context of the increasing confrontation in Russian-American relations, which are teetering on the verge of rupture due to the fault of Washington, trips to the United States of America privately or out of official necessity are fraught with serious risks,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, told a news briefing.
“We urge you to continue to refrain from trips to the United States of America and its allied satellite states, including, first of all, Canada and, with a few exceptions, European Union countries, during these holidays,” she said.
Both Moscow and Washington say their citizens have been wrongfully imprisoned and their diplomats harassed increasingly as relations soured, though they both defend convictions by their own justice systems.
Some Russians are in jail in the United States, and dozens of US citizens are in jail in Russia, convicted of a range of crimes ranging from espionage to hooliganism – even after the biggest Russian-US prisoner swap since the Cold War.
“Our citizens have become the subject of hunting by American authorities and US special services,” Zakharova said without elaborating.
