By Katie Stallard, Moscow Correspondent
Russia is pulling out of a decade-long pact with the US to tackle drug crime, in the latest public sign of the deteriorating relations between the two.
Washington had been helping to fund counter-trafficking operations, particularly targeting the flow of heroin from Afghanistan, since 2002.
But a statement published on the Russian Government website, and signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, now says Moscow has informed Washington that it is withdrawing from the deal because it "does not address today's realities and has exhausted its potential".
President Obama signs the Magnitsky rule into law last year Ten years ago, when the agreement was signed, Moscow said it lacked the money to fight drugs effectively on its own. Its latest announcement implies that Russia, whose economy has since been boosted by high global energy prices, can now afford to do its own crime-fighting.
But analysts pointed to the timing of the announcement as evidence of the continuing diplomatic fallout from the death of a Russian lawyer in 2009.
The headstone of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose death triggered an outcry Sergei Magnitsky died in a Moscow detention centre after being held for 358 days without trial - he had been attempting to expose a massive tax fraud at the time.
No-one has been convicted over his death, but his employer, a British-based investment firm, and human rights campaigners have published a list of around 60 Russian officials and policemen they allege were involved.
The US passed a law last year, dubbed the Magnitsky Act, banning those individuals (and any others Washington considers to be linked to human rights abuses) from travelling to the US as well as allowing any assets they hold there to be frozen.
Russia retaliated with its own law which, among other sanctions, bans American citizens from adopting Russian children.
Family and friends attend Sergei Magnitsky's funeral in 2009 Last week, the US announced it would leave a joint commission on civil society in protest at President Putin's record since his return to power last May.
Political analyst Andrey Piontkovsky told Sky News: "The explanation is very simple - it is not the first act of withdrawal from an agreement with the United States.
"My feeling is that Putin is preparing to take even more anti-Western postures, and he does want to be not dependant on any kind of co-operation.
"He is also calling for Russian oligarchs and businessmen to take their assets from the West and return them to Russia to make the Kremlin and his people less vulnerable to any reaction of the West to some future hostile action."
Russians protest against Moscow's decision to ban US couples from adopting "I think that the general line of withdrawing co-operation with the West looks very sinister and allows us to predict some more harsh anti-western policies - so there will be no resetting of the reset as President Obama has asked Putin."
He said the Magnitsky Act had done more damage to US-Russia relations than even American plans for a missile defence shield in Europe.
"The Magnitsky Act created this storm with Putin and the Russian so-called elite because it hurts them. Potentially, according to this act, Americans can freeze their assets in the United States and in other western countries."
"This is a blow to the heart of Putin's economic system because the Russian plutocracy likes the option of transferring money to a western bank, investing in western real estate and western economy - so this is very important and very sensitive for the Russian ruling class."
Russia's animosity is seen as coming from President Putin "They regard the Magnitsky Act as an act of war, if you want, so they planning to react in the same way and to make themselves less vulnerable - first by getting these assets out of the West and second by cutting off any co-operation with the West. "
The head of Russia's parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, Alexei Pushkov, told news agency Interfax that Moscow had initially warned Washington it was ready to end the anti-crime deal six months ago.
"So this should not come as a surprise," he was quoted as saying.
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