Russia's Ryabkov says Trump administration's contradictory signals makes life difficult

MOSCOW (Reuters) -A senior Russian diplomat said on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration's contradictory actions and words made it difficult though Moscow was dedicated to working on improving ties with Washington.

"The Trump administration is very contradictory in its actions and statements. This does not make the work easy," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by the state TASS news agency.

"Nevertheless," he quoted as saying, "we are persistently and consistently pursuing a course towards normalizing our relations."

Ryabkov said that Russia knew how to resist any possible additional sanctions out of Washington, Interfax news agency reported.

"We know how to resist sanctions. We see that in recent years we have developed tools and schemes that make it possible, by and large, to fill certain needs to a large extent through import substitution," Ryabkov said.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)