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Days after US President Donald Trump held a telephonic conversation with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and also attended a high-level diplomatic meeting with him in Saudi Arabia, diplomats of the two countries met in Turkey on Thursday for talks to resolve disputes over their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, foreign media reported.
According to Reuters, the Russian delegation arrived in a black Mercedes van for the meeting at US consul general’s residence in Istanbul. The talks were expected to last five to six hours, the report further mentioned, citing Russian state broadcaster.
The agenda for the meeting, as explained by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday, indicates that the two sides will first seek to remove technical barriers to diplomatic relations before moving toward other ambitious goals.
Today’s meeting in Istanbul will make it clear “how fast and efficiently the sides can move forward,” Lavrov had said, according to Russian broadcasting agency TASS.
Interestingly, the development comes a year after the Kremlin had described the US-Russia relations under the Joe Biden administration as “below zero”.
Notably, the Biden administration had backed Ukraine in its war with Russia by providing military assistance to Kyiv and hitting Moscow with a wave of sanctions. But with the Trump administation’s shift in policy suggesting that the US is now keen to open talks with Moscow and work towards ending the war in Ukraine, today’s discussion is being observed as the two nations’ first test of their ability to reset wider relations.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves for now: Kremlin spokesperson
Meanwhile, speaking on the prospects for mending US-Russia ties, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that “nobody expects quick and easy decisions”.
“Today’s meeting in Istanbul is at expert level. Our diplomats are working to develop the understanding that was reached in the telephone conversation between the two presidents and the agreements reached in Riyadh by the high-level delegations. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves for now,” BBC quoted Peskov as saying.
“Nobody expects quick and easy decisions”, Peskov further said, adding that the relations could be repaired if the two countries continue displaying the current “political will”.
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