Russia open to wide cooperation with US, including in high tech — deputy foreign minister

Russian businessmen are ready for wide-scale cooperation with US colleagues, including in the sphere of high technology, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Channel One, TASS reports.

"I want to confirm the interest of business circles of the two countries toward expanding cooperation and, at the very least, toward continuing the wide cooperation not only in trade, let's say in metals and soy beans, but also in the high technology sector, including start ups and pharmaceuticals, aviation, titanium production, and so on," Ryabkov said.

"Sanctions are an obstacle, but interests prevail. The US delegation has been the biggest at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum for two consecutive years. Unfortunately, we see political leverage in the US, when economic and business interests are in fact sacrificed to geopolitics," the diplomat noted. It was impossible to imagine five-ten years ago that "the US would risk their own fundamental principles of freedom of entrepreneurship, inviolability of US dollar as a world reserve currency," he added.

"However, I think that from the economic point of view, the prospects for our relations are better than they seem," Ryabkov concluded.