MOSCOW: Russia on Monday said that the United States had cancelled a fresh round of talks on normalising the operations of their embassies.
The two sides had met twice before in Istanbul to discuss their diplomatic missions, and were due to meet for a third time in Moscow, Russia’s US envoy said in an interview last week.
The US and Russian officials previously met on February 27 and April 10 in Istanbul, following an earlier meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Saudi Arabia.
“The next meeting… has been cancelled at the initiative of the American negotiators. We hope that the pause they have taken will not be too long,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. The spokeswoman did not say why Washington had made the decision.
Zakharova’s statement came a week after Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the talks would take place “very soon.” Washington never confirmed the meeting.
The US State Department has not yet commented on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement about the cancelled talks.
Since returning to the White House in January, US President Donald Trump has sought to improve ties with the Kremlin, reaching out to Vladimir Putin directly and initiating direct talks between the two sides.
Russian and US officials have since met to discuss a range of topics, including the Ukraine conflict, their economic ties and technical issues like their diplomatic missions.
Both sides have been operating their embassies with skeleton staff for years due to diplomatic expulsions.
