NEW DELHI: US secretary of state Antony Blinken and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov had a brief interaction for the first time since the start of the Ukraine war, US and Russian officials said on Thursday.
Blinken asked for “contact” with Lavrov during the second session of the G20 foreign ministers meeting, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zarkhova said. “They had contact, there were no talks or full-fledged meeting,” Zakharova said.
Unnamed US officials were quoted by The New York Times as saying that Blinken and Lavrov spoke face to face during a brief meeting on the margins of the G20 meeting that was dominated by tensions over the Ukraine war.
The meeting – news agency AP said it lasted roughly 10 minutes — had not been expected and Blinken told reporters accompanying him on a visit to Central Asia and India that there were no plans for meetings between him and Lavrov and Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang.
Blinken and Lavrov had spoken only once on phone since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 last year. They have attended several multilateral meetings but avoided any contact.
According to the Times, a senior US state department official told reporters that Blinken made three points to Lavrov – the US would continue supporting Ukraine in its defence against Russia “for as long as it takes”, Russia should rejoin the New START nuclear arms control treaty from which it recently withdrew, and that Russia should release Paul Whelan, an American citizen who has been wrongfully imprisoned.
During the G20 foreign ministers meeting held behind closed doors, Blinken joined other Western leaders in condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The Western leaders asked Russia to end its aggression in Ukraine and to withdraw its troops from the country.
The G20 meeting ended without a joint communique because of a lack of agreement between the foreign ministers on the language to describe the Ukraine war.
At a news conference, Lavrov blamed the failure to arrive at a consensus on the stand adopted by the Western countries.
