Russian diplomat unveils encounters and letdowns while working at UN in New York

MOSCOW, July 6. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was pleasantly surprised by the outward openness of people around her when she came to work at the UN headquarters in New York. However, later on, she was disappointed by the fact that their amiability was a mere veneer of sociability. "If we talk about revelations, that’s outward friendliness, the knack of meeting and greeting people in a positive light, reasoning, not starting off with something negative but rather furnishing an opportunity to immediately feel the atmosphere of a positive program. At the same time, I found no deep sincerity there, and that surprised me a lot," she said on Monday in an interview with TASS First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman. Russian people do not open up immediately when meeting others, she went on to say. "It is very important for us to break down the barrier and take a closer look. We tend to be wary and distrustful. It’s quite different there, after that positive approach, those initial smiles and kind words for some reason, you expect a triumph of feelings and emotions but that doesn’t happen," she explained. The diplomat noted that she was impressed by the architecture of the building, which houses the global organization’s headquarters, with all the cultural diversity prevailing within is walls. She recalled that it had been created in the late 1940s-early 1950s by a group of architects from different countries. "At the UN, I felt as if it was some sort of space interchange station between planets, because there are completely different people who fully preserve their identity, express their interests, while finding a common language," she elaborated. Read more