On Thursday during a G20 foreign ministers meeting in Delhi, India, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefly met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine just over a year ago, according to CNN.
The news: The meeting between the two high-level leaders lasted for roughly 10 minutes, and The Associated Press reported that there was “no sign of any progress and the conference itself ended with the grouping unable to reach consensus on the Ukraine war.”
- Blinken said that he told Lavrov to “end this war of aggression, engage in meaningful diplomacy that can produce a just and durable peace,” per BBC.
- He also urged Russia to return to participation in the START nuclear treaty and to release Paul Whelan, an American who is detained in the country, according to The Associated Press.
- The Washington Post said that a senior State Department official refused to talk about Lavrov’s response but said “Washington did not anticipate that Russia has changed its position about the war in Ukraine.”
The bigger picture: This is the first time high-level officials from the U.S. and Russia have met face to face since relations between the two countries had “plummeted” since last February.
- CNN stated that Blinken was the one to initiate Thursday’s conversation.
- The Associated Press claimed that this is the worst relations have been between the U.S. and Russia since the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Cold War.
- “The mere fact that the two men met showed that, at least for the moment, lines of high-level communication between Washington and Moscow remains open,” the AP said.