The White House spokeswoman said that US President Joe Biden has made a final decision against designating Russia as a "state sponsor of terrorism," noting that designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism "is not the most effective way to hold Moscow accountable."
"The designation of Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism could delay food exports and threaten agreements to transport goods through the Black Sea," White House spokeswoman Karen Jean-Pierre told reporters, as well as seriously affecting the ability to provide assistance in areas of Ukraine.
The US President had rejected the idea the day before yesterday, and when asked whether Russia should be classified as a state sponsor of terrorism, Biden told reporters at the White House: "No."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called last June to classify Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, after a Russian raid on a shopping center in central Ukraine killed more than 20 people, and some US lawmakers pressed for this.
Moscow has warned that this designation will lead to the collapse of US-Russian relations. Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Yury Kokov said that Washington has suspended all bilateral contacts on combating international terrorism, and is trying to get Russia out of all current international forms of cooperation in this field.
Biden had said in a speech in the Polish capital of Warsaw last March, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could not remain in power, a phrase that was understood as an American call to change the Russian regime.
But the White House was quick to clarify Biden's words, saying that "what the president wanted to say is that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise authority over his neighbors or the region, and he was not talking about Putin's rule in Russia nor about regime change."
The US President has also previously described his Russian counterpart as a "war criminal", a description that Moscow strongly protested.