Russia has launched an effort on creating the list of unfriendly states, which are banned from hiring Russian citizens for work in the diplomatic missions, and the United States is among them, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

“The decree of President Vladimir Putin was published, which contains a whole number of measures on fulfilling the already existing federal laws, under which those states, which are declared unfriendly, cannot hire Russian citizens as staff for their diplomatic and consular missions. What are these unfriendly states? The list is being drawn up now. As we understand, the whole story began with another wave of unfriendly US steps. As you understand and I can confirm this, naturally, the US is on this list”, - said Zakharova.

She added that Putin’s decree was a retaliatory measure against other countries’ hostile steps.