US-Russia ties cannot improve amid economic sanctions

Simon Dawson | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Oleg Deripaska, Russian billionaire and president of United Co. Rusal, gestures as he speaks on the Bloomberg Television debate panel during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) at the Expoforum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Thursday, June 1, 2017.

Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska, a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Sunday that Moscow and Washington are more interested in “muscle flexing” than improving their relationship.

Asked whether he has hopes of thawing tensions between Russia and the West while economic sanctions are in place, Deripaska replied: “The way I see it, from the U.S. side, it is impossible.”

“If you look at the reality, Russian people (and) American people, they don’t hate each other,” he told CNBC’s Geoff Cutmore during an exclusive interview in Moscow. “In the heart of the Russian people, I think there is room to go and start a new page but the problem is all of this muscle flexing from both sides.”

Deripaska on Friday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department to lift the sanctions it placed on him last year as part of a wider retaliation for Russian interference in the U.S. election and what the Treasury described as its “malign activity around the globe.”

The billionaire commodities magnate claims his wealth dropped by 81 percent, or $7.5 billion, as a result of the sanctions, and that he’s become “a victim of this country’s political infighting.”

His companies EN+ and Rusal, the latter of which is the world’s second biggest aluminum producer, came under sanctions as part of the U.S. measures against the Russian government in April of 2018.

The lawsuit is the latest shot in a long series of provocations and flare-ups between Russia and the U.S., whose relations are seen by many as at their worst since the Cold War.