MOSCOW, Dec 8: The United States will continue to advance its own interests in the former Soviet Union despite Russian objections, but will also encourage the future leadership in Ukraine to sustain traditionally close bonds with Moscow , a senior US diplomat said here on Wednesday.

Russia's leaders "understand that we are going to stay engaged in the former Soviet space and that they're not going to be able to claim a monopoly of influence in that region", the diplomat told a small group of reporters.

Washington, he said, would not back down on what it considered "issues of principle" such as the promotion of democracy in former Soviet states despite increasingly fierce resistance to US policy in the region from Moscow and will not be drawn into "sphere of influence talking of any kind".

At the same time, the United States recognized that Russia had deep historical, cultural, religious and other ties to Ukraine and saw no reason why that bond should be broken. "We will certainly be encouraging Ukrainian leaders, whoever they are after Dec 26, to develop good relations with Russia," the diplomat said.

His comments came less than a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin described the United States as running a "dictatorship" in international affairs and two days after he again lashed out at the West for what Moscow has described as its "excessive" involvement in the Ukraine vote.

The US diplomat said that it was in fact Mr Putin who had "made some serious miscalculations" in efforts to influence the outcome of the election in Ukraine and had put Russia's prestige and political leadership in jeopardy as a result.

"We're determined ... to continue to try to persuade the Russians not to view this in zero-sum terms," he said, referring to differences over the vote in Ukraine. "Clearly there will be some effects on US-Russian relations, but we hope they will not be long-lasting ones." -AFP