Russia has announced it will appoint a new ambassador to Washington, signalling a further diplomatic thaw in relations just a day after Russian and American officials met in Istanbul to discuss strengthening ties.
Moscow said Alexander Darchiyev, a career diplomat who is currently the head of the foreign ministry’s North America department, will soon leave for the role in Washington.
Moscow has not had an envoy in the US since the last ambassador left his post in October last year.
Russia’s foreign ministry said the US had formally approved Moscow’s appointment of Darchiyev after Thursday’s talks in Istanbul, where diplomats met to discuss improving bilateral relations.
Darchiyev, 64, previously served as Russia’s ambassador to Canada from October 2014 to January 2021. He has worked for the foreign ministry since 1992 and held a senior post at the embassy in Washington earlier in his career.
In a statement published on Russia’s foreign ministry website, Moscow said it had proposed restoring direct flights between the two countries during the talks in Istanbul.
Following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine’s allies – including the US, the UK and the EU – banned Russian planes from their airspace.
On Friday, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said officials in Istanbul “agreed on joint steps to ensure the uninterrupted financing of diplomatic missions in both countries and to create appropriate conditions for diplomats to carry out their duties effectively”.
Over the past decade, Russia and the US have repeatedly expelled each other’s diplomats, significantly reducing their embassy staffing levels.
The talks in Istanbul marked the second consecutive week of meetings between Washington and Moscow, after last week’s discussions in Saudi Arabia where the two country’s vowed to improve economic relations that had been cut by the imposition of western sanctions.
The series of meetings, first set in motion by a call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin earlier this month, signal a dramatic shift in relations.
The Russian president on Thursday applauded the new US administration for “pragmatism, a realistic worldview” and described initial contacts with the Trump administration as “inspiring a certain degree of hope”.
“There is a reciprocal mood to work to restore intergovernmental ties and to gradually resolve the huge number of systemic and strategic problems that have built up in the world’s security architecture,” said Putin at a meeting with the leadership of the FSB intelligence service.
Putin also seemed to suggest that Europe and the UK were attempting to undermine negotiations between Russia and the US.
“We understand that not everyone is happy with the resumption of Russian-American contacts. Some western elites are still determined to maintain instability in the world, and these forces will try to disrupt or compromise the dialogue that has begun,” he said.
Trump’s pivot toward closer ties with Putin has sent shock waves through Europe. The leaders of the UK and France, who met the US president separately this week, have been pushing him to maintain support for Ukraine.
