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Easing in U.S.-Russia Ties Seen in Move on Moscow School Visas

Russia to Grant Some Visas to U.S.-Embassy Backed Moscow School

(Bloomberg) -- Russia has softened its refusal to issue visas for teachers at a Moscow school run by the U.S., British and Canadian embassies amid signs of a slight thaw in tensions between the Kremlin and Washington.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday issued seven of the 30 visas requested, which will allow all current students to return, according to an email sent to parents by Rhonda Norris, the director of the Anglo-American School of Moscow. The school can’t yet confirm enrollment to some 50 new pupils because of the lack of availability of teachers, she said.

The Anglo-American School has been caught in the middle of a diplomatic dispute between Russia and the U.S. since the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election. The visa move comes after President Donald Trump called Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to offer help battling wildfires raging across Siberia. While Putin declined assistance, he said it was a sign the two countries could restore “full-fledged relations.”

Russia’s Emergencies Ministry may take up the U.S. offer of help in fighting the forest fires and is “grateful to our American colleagues” for making it, the state-run RIA Novosti news service reported Thursday, citing Vladimir Solovyov, who heads the ministry’s department of international activities.

On the school dispute, “there’s progress, made on the basis of reciprocity,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a text message. “We support a full settlement of this issue.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy did not immediately respond to a request to comment. Russia has previously sought the U.S.’s agreement to boost the number of support personnel at its Washington embassy in exchange for the teachers’ visas.

Diplomatic ‘Pawns’

U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman had said Russia was using pupils “as pawns in diplomatic disputes” by refusing visas for the school, which was founded in 1949 by the U.S., British and Canadian governments to educate the children of diplomats. Russia accused the U.S. of misrepresenting the situation, saying it denied only teachers who had applied for visas as embassy employees with diplomatic passports.

While Trump has declared his eagerness to form better relations with Putin, Washington and Moscow have been at loggerheads after American intelligence agencies determined that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign in support of his candidacy. The U.S. imposed sanctions and there were tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.

The Anglo-American School was forced to close its St. Petersburg campus after a round of diplomatic expulsions last year in the wake of the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal in the U.K.

During the waning days of President Barack Obama’s term in 2016, CNN reported that the Kremlin planned to order the school closed after a new round of U.S. sanctions for its alleged election interference. Instead, Putin declined to retaliate in hopes that the incoming Trump administration would establish better relations.

Only a small minority of students at the Anglo-American School are children of diplomats at its founding embassies. Children from other diplomatic missions also study there, as well as those of international businessmen and wealthy Russians. It has about 1,200 students from more than 60 countries enrolled in pre-kindergarten through high school.

--With assistance from Stepan Kravchenko.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jake Rudnitsky in Moscow at jrudnitsky@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin

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