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Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on interstate relations ahead of high-level talks between Washington and Moscow next week.
Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle Eastern envoy Steve Witkov will meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia next week, according to those familiar with the issue.
The high-level meeting comes after President Donald Trump spoke with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and agreed to start negotiations to end the war in Ukraine “quickly” Ta.
Rubio “reaffirmed President Trump’s commitment to end the conflict in Ukraine,” State Department spokesman Tammy Bruce said of Lavrov’s appeal. “In addition, they discussed opportunities to potentially cooperate with many other bilateral issues.”
The call between Rubio and Lavrov is an important indication that substantial work on negotiations has begun, and that the two countries are once again in regular contact and diplomacy is normalised. Saturday’s call was the first time the US and Russia have spoken at that level in nearly two years, but they maintain back-channel communications.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has cooperated with the “restoration of mutually respectful interstate dialogue” in line with Lavrov and Rubio, set by Trump’s call with Putin on Wednesday, to meet with the two leaders He said he agreed to cooperate in setting up the
They also wrote “a line of communication to resolve the problems of US-Russia relations in order to remove the unilateral barriers to mutually beneficial trade, economic and investment cooperation inherited from previous administrations.” I agreed to create it. It shows that the United States was ready to roll back sanctions against Moscow over the invasion.
Lavrov and Rubio shared a “mutual willingness to cooperate with current international issues” in Ukraine, Palestinian territory and the Middle East, and more, the ministry added. They also agreed to set up expert-level meetings to discuss lifting mutual restrictions on each other’s embassies and agree to “specific steps to lift mutual barriers” that restrict work. did.
The US Embassy in Moscow and the Russian Embassy in Washington have been operating with significant staffing restrictions after several banishment of Tarts dating back to allegations of Russian election interference in Trump’s first victory in 2016. It’s there.
Trump on Thursday said there is still a “long road” to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but his call with Putin was marked as “a long road to gaining a solution” to the war He said that.
Trump said he oversaw Rubio, CIA directors John Ratcliffe, Waltz and Witcoff and led the US negotiation team. His Ukrainian envoy Keith Kellogg was significantly absent from this list.
Rhetoric from Trump and other US authorities over the negotiations this week has been wary of Kiev and the European capital, which fears they will be sidelined in Washington’s negotiations with Moscow.
The US called on the European capital to provide detailed suggestions on weapons, peacekeeping forces and security arrangements that Ukraine can offer as part of a security guarantee to end the war with Russia.
Washington will send a survey to the European government to rule out the continent’s willingness to protect Kiev after the war, and measure the price Europe is willing to pay in exchange for seats at the negotiation table with Moscow.
