The Russian Foreign Ministry said the U.S. has canceled another round of talks on “normalization of relations and the work of diplomatic missions”.
This was reported by The Moscow Times, Ukrinform saw.
As per Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, the next round of talks between representatives of Russia and the U.S. on the normalization of bilateral relations, which Moscow announced for later this week, will not take place.
She added that Washington allegedly canceled consultations where it was planned to discuss the elimination of mutual “irritants” and normalization of the work of diplomatic missions.
Since the Donald Trump administration took office, Russian and American representatives have held face-to-face meetings at least six times. The first of these took place on February 18 in Riyadh, the second was held on February 27 in Istanbul. A month later, on March 24, the two delegations met again in the capital of Saudi Arabia.
In early April, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, flew to Washington for negotiations, a week later, Trump’s special envoy, Stephen Witkoff, arrived in St. Petersburg, and almost simultaneously, on April 10, Russian and American diplomats met again in Istanbul, the publication writes.
Last week, the new Russian ambassador to the United States, Alexander Darchiev, said the next round of consultations would take place “in the coming days in Moscow”. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not specify why Washington canceled the talks.
As Ukrinform reported earlier, following the first round of negotiations on February 18 in Saudi Arabia, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the parties agreed to restore the staff of their embassies in Washington and Moscow in order to create missions to support peace talks on Ukraine.
