After more than a week of silence, Donald Trump expressed his opinion about the expulsion by Moscow of almost a thousand members of the American diplomatic mission in Russia. In the opinion of the US President, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has made the right decision and deserves words of gratitude from him personally.

On August 10, the Republican drove journalists and experts into a stupor with an unexpected commentary on Moscow's demand to reduce the staff of US diplomatic missions in Russia, writes ABS.

Asked what he thinks about this, Trump blurted out: "I want to thank him (the president of the Russian Federation), because we're just trying to cut spending on salaries. So I'm very grateful that he fired a lot of people. Now we will spend less on it. Save a lot of money ".

Donald Trump added that the staff of diplomatic workers in Russia was and is overly exaggerated, but for their recall to their homeland "there were no real reasons". So Russia in this plan only helped the United States.

Such reasonings of the head of the White House instantly blew up the public and American politicians. Donald Trump part of politicians and the press immediately hastened to blame for "a lack of understanding of diplomacy and political ignorance".

Ex-Deputy Secretary of State, former US Permanent Representative to NATO Nicholas Burns, in his Twitter found "regrettable how disrespectful the president is treating career diplomats of his country".

Vice President of the Woodrow Wilson Washington Research Center Aaron David Miller, who was an adviser on the Middle East settlement of a number of US State Secretaries, called Trump's statements "the most shameful moment in his presidential term".

"This shows that Trump does not understand diplomacy," - criticized the president of the former US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul.

Correspondent of the American influential edition of Politico at the White House, Annie Carney wrote that this statement the Republican spat in the face of his closest associates who "had never heard such an argument".

Among the critics there were also those who from emotions turned to the essence and questioned Trump's logic that the expulsion of US diplomats from Russia means a reduction in spending. It is believed that the diplomats are not dismissed from the US State Department, but only return from a Russian trip. It should be noted that among the personnel being cut are not only persons with a diplomatic passport of the United States, but locally accepted Russian citizens who worked in the US diplomatic missions.

Of course, you can call Trump's words about gratitude to Putin as anything, demarche, objectivity, the desire to keep a good face in a bad game, and even just the Republican's harmfulness. After all, his words "cut their ears" to the US foreign policy establishment. But if you look closely, then, in fact, his words fit perfectly with the approach of the current owner of the White House to the US State Department: at the direction of the President, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is working on reorganizing the foreign policy department, in which several units and special positions. The administration of Donald Trump voiced plans in the coming years to reduce the foreign ministry's budget by a third.

At the end of July, both chambers of the US Congress approved a bill on strengthening and tightening anti-Russian sanctions, which would significantly affect the banking and energy sectors of Russian big business.

In response, Moscow invited Washington by September 1, 2017 to bring the number of its diplomatic missions in Russia in full compliance with the number of Russian missions in the United States - that is, to reduce to 455 people. Later, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained that this means a reduction of 755 US embassy staff in Russia.

The US State Department reacted extremely negatively to Russia's decision and promised retaliatory measures by September 1, 2017.