US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shake hands before their meeting on January 21, 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland. Alex Brandon/POOL/AFPpix: The top U.S. and Russian diplomats made no major breakthrough at talks on Ukraine on Friday but agreed to keep talking to try to resolve a crisis that has stoked fears of a military conflict.
“Based on the conversations we’ve had - the extensive conversations - over the past week and today here in Geneva I think there are grounds for and a means to address some of the mutual concerns that we have about security,“ Blinken said.“It can choose the path of diplomacy that can lead to peace and security, or the path that will lead only to conflict, severe consequences and international condemnation,“ Blinken told reporters, adding that diplomacy would be preferable.
“I can’t tell you if we’re on the right track or the wrong track. We’ll understand this when we receive the American response on paper to all the points in our proposal,“ Lavrov said. Russia and the United States could hold another meeting next month to discuss Moscow’s demands for security guarantees, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted a source in the Russian delegation as saying.Lavrov said Russia had worries of its own, “not about invented threats, but real facts that no one hides - pumping Ukraine with weapons, sending hundreds of western military instructors”.
Blinken said of another potential meeting between Biden and Putin: “If we conclude, and the Russians conclude, that the best way to resolve things is through a further conversation between them, we’re certainly prepared do that.”Washington’s hopes of building a united front of opposition to Moscow were complicated by Biden’s comments at a news conference on Wednesday in which he suggested that allies might be divided on how to respond to a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, Blinken assured Ukraine of U.S. support. Blinken, before meeting German, French and British officials in Berlin on Thursday, said Putin could order an invasion imminently.
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