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'Reset' With U.S. Ended With Libya, Not Crimea, Putin Says

President Vladimir Putin talks to the media after a live broadcast nationwide phone-in on Thursday. S. Karpukhin for Reuters

President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that his country's much-vaunted "reset" in relations with the U.S. had ended with the civil war in Libya in 2011, long before the current crisis over Crimea.

"You know, it's not that it [the reset] has ended now over Crimea. I think it ended even earlier, right after the events in Libya," Putin said at his annual call-in Thursday.

Russia criticized the scale of international intervention in Libya's civil conflict in 2011 that ended in the deposition and killing of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

The U.S.-Russian "reset" was launched amid much fanfare in 2009 after promises by U.S. President Barack Obama and then-President Dmitry Medvedev of a fresh start in bilateral relations.

In March of that year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed a symbolic button prepared by the State Department that was meant to have the Russian word for "reset" on it but instead said "overload."

See related articles:

U.S.-Russian Reset Likely to Lose Momentum

Dark Clouds Gather Over U.S. Reset

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