McFaul: Russia needs to be 'curbed'
The former United States Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, stated that Russia should be ‘curbed.’ According to him, Moscow’s aggressive actions require the appropriate response, as reported by RBC.
McFaul stated his views in his interview with Estonian newspaper Postimees. According to him, Russia’s actions require a strong and specific response. “The United States should curb Russia according to need and respond to it,” the former Ambassador said.
McFaul was impressed by the more recent actions of the United States. “Never in the history of Russian-American relations have sanctions been applied against such a large number of people and enterprises,” he explained. He stressed that he believed the decisions, which were taken to strengthen NATO, to be sound.
“Russia’s policy has resulted in the fact that the Alliance has to respond to the threat posed by Russia and that NATO has started taking steps in this direction,” McFaul stated, further explaining that he is unaware of any promise by NATO not to expand eastward. “This statement is purely imaginary. My experience with Russian diplomats has shown that Russians want to record almost everything on paper. Written agreements are required for everything. In this regard, why there is no such agreement?”
In summer 2015, McFaul reassured Russia that there was no cause for concern over NATO’s protective weaponry stationed near Russian borders. McFaul also Tweeted that NATO would never attack Russia because only a complete fool would do so. “Fortunately, there are no such fools in the leadership of NATO,” McFaul wrote in response to a comment made by one of the users.
Michael McFaul was the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2011 to 2014. “Let’s just say that I wasn’t an ordinary Ambassador; I had acted unconventionally in many areas and senses and I’m proud of it. My resignation is connected exclusively with family circumstances,” McFaul told Kommersant. Currently, he teaches at Stanford University, where he himself graduated in 1986. John Tefft succeeded McFaul as the United States Ambassador to Russia.
In April 2016, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Maria Zakharova, called McFaul’s antics an "anti-example of appropriate behavior for the head of a diplomatic mission". She explained that when one meets with the [Russian] opposition in the first days in a new job instead of coming to meet with new colleagues from the [Russian] Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it is disrespectful to the state from which one comes. In response to this, McFaul wrote on his Twitter that he will consider it as a compliment.