Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov has put forward Russian President Vladimir Putin's initiatives to set up a council of entrepreneurs of the two countries and a commission of former ministers and political analysts. This announcement was made at the sidelines of the annual international forum Fort Ross in San Francisco.

"When it comes to the Fort Ross dialogue, I think that this is an important and necessary event. This event gives an opportunity for Russian and American colleagues to just sit down together and talk, to think about the world we are living in. The main question is what to do in order to imporve Russian-US relations," Antonov said.

"It is just not normal that we have almost no communication channels now. There are contacts between presidents, ministers [of foreign affairs], between [US National Security Advisor John] Bolton and [Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay] Patrushev, but there are no contacts at a lower level," he noted.

"We reminded our colleagues about the proposals put forward by Vladimir Putin at a press conference with [US President] Donald Trump. I can tell you that here, in California, not many people know about it. I took advantage of my visit to California, while meeting with students, political analysts, with businessmen and politicians, to explain this positive program of restoring ties between the two countries," Antonov said.

At the forum, "interesting conversations were held about at least two projects - in particular, on setting up a joint committee, comission, council consisting of 'business captains' who could get together and think about ways to find concrete projects of economic cooperation in the existing gaps," the Russian ambassador said. "Colleagues also supported Vladimir Putin's idea about creating a bilateral Russian-US commission at the level of former political analysts, former diplomats, [former] ambassadors, former defense ministers, former generals, who could get together and think about possible projects in bilateral relations, who could help get the relations out of a crisis situation," he added. "It would be great if that would start to develop in California," Antonov said.