Prominent political scientist: Kremlin should refrain from retaliating against the US action

Russia's prominent political scientist Sergei Karaganov believes it is too early to speak about Russia-US tensions. Washington's decision to expel a group of Russian diplomats from the US was just a "demonstration of strength", so what we are witnessing now are just "quasi-tensions" between Moscow and Washington, said the political scientist at a Moscow press conference. The US administration is trying to "flex its muscles so as to be able to conduct US-Russian dialogue from a position of strength," went on the chief of Russia's Council for Foreign and Defence Policy. Karaganov urged the Kremlin to refrain from retaliating against the States' action, RIA Novosti reports. In his opinion, retaliatory measures could only aggravate the confrontation. The worst thing the sides can do at the moment is "to produce more friction between them instead of smoothing it over," believes the foreign-policy expert.