Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefly met with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in India.
The top diplomats of their countries met for roughly 10 minutes face-to-face on Thursday in their first in-person encounter since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, according to the Associated Press. The meeting comes as a critical juncture in the war as both Russia and Ukraine look to mount offensive military maneuvers in the coming weeks.
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Blinken made three points during the conversation. First, the U.S. would support Ukraine for however long the conflict lasts. He also said that Russia should reverse its decision to suspend its participation in the New START nuclear treaty between the two countries. Finally, he stated that Moscow should release detained American Paul Whelan, a senior U.S. official told the outlet.
“I wouldn’t say that coming out of this encounter there was any expectation that things will change in the near term,” a State Department official traveling with Blinken told traveling reporters, according to CNN, while Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the outlet that the U.S. diplomat requested the meeting and that “there were no negotiations, meetings, etc.”
The secretary of state has been in Central Asia this week hoping to shore up support for Ukraine as Russia looks to other countries for assistance in evading sanctions and helping them in the war.
The two have not met in person since January 2022, and that meeting, which took place in Geneva, occurred just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. They have been at meetings together over the year but did not speak to one another on those occasions.
They last spoke over the phone last July when Blinken “pressed the Kremlin to accept the substantial proposal that we put forth on the release of Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner,” the latter of whom was freed in a prisoner swap in December.
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Whelan got arrested in late 2018 while in Russia for a wedding. The FSB said at the time he was caught “while on a spy mission,” allegations that he, his family, and the U.S. government have denounced as false. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020.
The Kremlin, according to U.S. officials, treats him differently given the espionage charge, and that’s why he has not been included in the two prisoner swaps that the U.S. and Russia agreed to in 2022.
