MOSCOW — US national security adviser John Bolton and Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev met in Geneva on Aug. 23 for the first high-level meeting of officials from the two countries since the US-Russia presidential summit in Helsinki on July 16. In between the two meeting, US President Donald Trump came under heavy criticism at home for the summit with President Vladimir Putin and because of Trump's remarks at the press conference with the Russian leader. The Helsinki meeting reignited the debate in the United States on dealing with Moscow. And a new round of US sanctions imposed following the Putin-Trump summit has helped the Russian currency, along with the overall bilateral relationship, plummet to new lows.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued an immediate statement saying a policy of sanctions “is a road to nowhere.”

“No matter how many waves of unilateral sanctions Washington sends (their total number stands at 55), they will never be legitimate. The reliance of US politicians on such restrictions is an attempt to conceal their futility,” the statement read.

A day before the Bolton-Patrushev meeting, Putin called the new American sanctions “pointless” and said they don’t have to do with President Trump but rather “the so-called American establishment.”