The Russian deputy foreign minister and U.S. officials met in Istanbul on Friday to discuss a number of technical difficulties in their bilateral relationship. According to the embassy in Ankara.
The conflict in Ukraine was not brought up, a U.S. spokeswoman for the embassy said.
The two sides would discuss “tough matters” such as visas, embassy staffing levels, and the operation of each side’s organizations and agencies abroad, among other unidentified issues, according to Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who was quoted by Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
According to Ryabkov, the meeting was between American and Russian department heads from the foreign ministries. Russian state news agencies describe the State Department as being at a rather low level. He stressed that the technical meeting should not be interpreted as an indication that the two sides are prepared to resume talking about “important issues.”
a representative for the U.S. A senior official from the State Department was in Istanbul to meet with Russian interlocutors on a specific range of bilateral problems, according to the embassy in Ankara, which confirmed the meeting.
The spokeswoman stated that “Russia’s war in Ukraine was not discussed.”
The American and Russian embassies in Washington, D.C., have been drastically reduced in recent years as a result of a series of tit-for-tat expulsions that saw scores of Russian and American diplomats hauled back to their home countries.
Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russian foreign intelligence, and U.S. The highest-level face-to-face interaction between the two sides since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February took place on November 14 in the Turkish capital, Ankara, between William Burns, director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who spoke to TASS, the larger situation of bilateral relations was not discussed during talks between intelligence services.
But at the end of November, Russia cancelled a conference that was supposed to take place in Cairo to talk about starting up nuclear weapons inspections as per the New START pact.
Moscow attributed the last-minute cancellation to Washington, claiming that the Russian side was left with little choice when the US declared it would not discuss the broader subject of “strategic stability” at the talks.
Reuters reporting
