Despite the situation caused by the Ukraine war, Russia should not close the US embassy since the world’s two most powerful nuclear powers must continue to communicate, the US ambassador to Moscow was cited as saying on Monday.

President Vladimir Putin has described the invasion of Ukraine as a watershed moment in Russian history: a revolt against US hegemony, which the Kremlin chief claims has humiliated Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

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Ukraine – and its Western sponsors – claim to be fighting for its existence in the face of a reckless imperial-style territorial grab that has murdered thousands, evicted more than 10 million people, and turned vast swaths of the nation into desolation.

In a blatant effort to send a message to the Kremlin, John J. Sullivan, President Donald Trump’s chosen ambassador, told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency that Washington and Moscow should not just cut diplomatic ties.

“We must preserve the ability to speak to each other,” Sullivan told TASS in an interview. He warned against removing Leo Tolstoy’s publications from Western bookstores or refusing to play Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s music.

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His comments were reported in Russian by TASS and translated into English by Reuters.

Despite the Cold War’s crises, spy scandals, and brinkmanship, connections between Moscow and Washington have not been severed since the US established links with the Soviet Union in 1933.

However, Russia now declares that its post-Soviet relationship with the West is gone and that it will shift eastward.

Last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken joked that he wanted to dedicate Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” to Putin.

When asked about the remark, Sullivan responded, “We also will never break up entirely.”

When TASS questioned if the analogy indicated that the embassies could be shuttered, Sullivan responded, “They can – there is that possibility, although I think it would be a big mistake.”

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“As I understand it, the Russian government has mentioned the variant of severing diplomatic relations,” he stated. “We can’t just break off diplomatic relations and stop talking to each other.”

Russia’s foreign ministry has summoned the Moscow bureau chiefs of US media outlets to discuss the consequences of the US’ hostile actions on Monday.

Tsarina Catherine the Great’s denial to support the British empire when America declared independence paved the way for the first diplomatic contacts between the US and St Petersburg, Russia’s imperial capital at the time.

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Following the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognise Vladimir Lenin’s revolutionary government, and the US embassy was closed in 1919. Relationships were not restored until 1933.

“The only reason I can think of that the United State might be forced to close its embassy would be if it became unsafe to continue its work,” Sullivan stated.

When asked how relations would progress, Sullivan, a 62-year-old lawyer, said he didn’t know but hoped for a rapprochement one day.

“If I were to make a bet, I would say perhaps not in my lifetime.”