Russia hopes British top diplomat's visit can help mend ties

MOSCOW, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- Moscow expects the upcoming visit of the British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to help mend bilateral relations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.

"The current state and prospects of Russian-British relations are planned to be discussed, focusing on their normalization through a dialogue based on mutual respect and equal rights," she told a weekly news briefing.

In October, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said Johnson will visit Moscow "towards the end of the year," after he canceled a planned trip to Russia in April over a deadly chemical weapon incident in Syria.

Zakharova said that in the time remaining before the visit, Moscow expected London to take concrete steps confirming its desire to pull bilateral relations out of the current impasse.

The relations between the two countries soured in 2014 due to the incorporation of Crimea to Russia and Moscow's alleged involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.

Britain, along with the United States and the European Union, imposed rounds of economic sanctions on Russia and suspended all military cooperation.

After Johnson was appointed Foreign Secretary in July 2016, Zakharova said at a briefing that Moscow expected him to contribute to "turning over not the best page in the book of Russian-British relations." Enditem