Delegations from Moscow and Washington met on Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to discuss the restoration of diplomatic ties, future Ukraine peace talks, and an upcoming summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Donald Trump.
The Russian team included Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, presidential aide Yury Ushakov, and Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev. Representing the United States were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and special envoy Ambassador Steve Witkoff.
Here’s what the sides said following the meeting, which lasted nearly 4.5 hours:
Russia and the US will work to restore diplomatic missions
According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the talks were useful and both delegations worked “quite successfully” on improving relations.
One of the first steps agreed upon during the meeting, he explained, is to once and for all solve the issue of diplomatic missions, given that both countries had exchanged a number of diplomatic expulsions during the Biden administration, resulting in a breakdown of communications between Moscow and Washington.
As part of this, Moscow and Washington have committed to appoint ambassadors to each other’s countries as soon as possible and remove the “artificial barriers” that had been built by the Biden administration to “seriously complicate” the work of Russia’s diplomatic missions and hinder the development of normal relations, Lavrov said.
The deputy heads of the diplomatic departments of the two countries will soon meet to put an end to these issues, among which Lavrov listed the seizure of Russian real estate in the US and the restrictions on bank transfers for the Russian side.
No comments:
Post a Comment