Riyadh/Moscow, Feb 18: Russia and the United States will soon announce teams to negotiate a path to ending the war in Ukraine besides also ensuring the “earliest possible appointment” of ambassadors in both Moscow and Washington.
“Russia and the United States will hold regular consultations on Ukraine after both sides appoint negotiating teams,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press briefing following talks with US officials in Riyadh, on Tuesday.
A meeting of deputy foreign ministers will be scheduled in the near future to “remove barriers” to the work of embassies, Lavrov said following the talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff.
On the Russian side, senior political, intelligence, and economic officials participated, including Yuri Ushakov, the Kremlin’s foreign affairs advisor. “The first is probably the most urgent and certainly not the most difficult. This is to ensure the earliest possible appointment of Russian ambassadors to the United States and the United States to Russia.
To remove the obstacles that for many years, primarily from the administration of [former US President Joe] Biden, have been primarily built on the direction of our diplomatic missions, seriously complicating their work,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency while announcing the agreements reached during the meeting.
Lavrov stated that the deputy heads of the diplomatic departments of the two countries “will agree to meet in the very near future and consider the need to eliminate these artificial barriers in the work of embassies and other foreign institutions of Russia in the United States and the United States in Russia”.
During these contacts, he said, senior diplomats will have to not focus on “the specific manifestation of these obstacles, but will try to approach them systematically in order to put an end once and for all to these inconveniences that really hinder the development of everyday normal relations”.
The top Russian officials cited that, among the obstacles created by the previous White House administration, was the endless expulsions of diplomats, to which Moscow was forced to respond, the continuing problems of seizures of Russian real estate, and much more.
“Not the least of the problems is bank transfers, which they are trying to limit for us,” the Russian Foreign Minister added. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs advisor Yuri Ushakov said that the specific date of the meeting between the leaders of Russia and the US has not yet been finalised.
IANS