The conversation between US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the G20 meeting in India lasted eight minutes; no such contact with Moscow is planned in the future. About it during the briefing declared State Department spokesman Ned Price.
“It was a pretty brief contact of eight minutes,” Price said. According to him, Washington “is under no illusions that such a short communication could change Russia’s position in the foreseeable future or now”.
Regarding further contacts with Moscow, Price noted that the United States does not expect any high-level contact in the near future, but that American leaders are still open to dialogue.
On March 2, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a brief conversation at the March 2 G20 Foreign Ministers meeting. It was the first high-level Russian-American meeting in recent months.
A senior US delegation official said Blinken took advantage of the situation to convey three messages to Lavrov: Washington will support Kiev until the end of the conflict; Moscow should reverse its decision to suspend its participation in START; Russia must release US citizen Paul Whelan.
According to the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, the conversation took place at the request of Blinken. It was the first contact between Blinken and Lavrov since the summer of 2022, when the US secretary of state called his Russian counterpart to discuss Washington’s offer to release Paul Whelan and basketball player Britney Griner.
