Quote:MOSCOW (AP) — As the drama over Attorney General Jeff Sessions plays out in Washington, the Kremlin is watching with a mixture of frustration and regret how the uproar is blocking progress on pressing issues on the U.S.-Russian agenda.

Despite the dashed hopes for a quick thaw, however, Moscow is voicing its readiness to wait as long as it takes.

Donald Trump had come into office expressing admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and hoping to mend ties with Moscow, which have sunk to the lowest point since the Cold War over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and other disputes.

But the allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies of Russian meddling in the election to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton will likely continue to weigh over his administration and prevent it from launching a meaningful dialogue with the Kremlin any time soon.

In a conference call with reporters, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov lamented the lack of cooperation with Washington on Syria beyond the U.S. diplomatic presence at peace talks in Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana that Russia and Turkey brokered earlier this year.

“Similarly, there has been no movement forward regarding cooperation in the fight against terrorism, which causes regret,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly talked of cooperating with Russia in fighting the Islamic State group in Syria. The administration of former President Barack Obama had ruled out such cooperation because of Moscow’s support for its longtime ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad.[…]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that contacts with officials and lawmakers are part of any ambassador’s duties. He added that the pressure on Sessions “strongly resembles a witch hunt or the times of McCarthyism, which we thought were long over in the United States as a civilized country.”

In the 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy led a hunt for purported communist infiltrators in the U.S. government, often involving unfounded accusations that promoted widespread fear.

Noting Russia won’t mimic the U.S., Lavrov added that “if we applied the same principle to Ambassador (John) Tefft’s activities in Russia and his contacts, it would have made quite a funny picture.”