“They agreed on regular contacts, including those for preparations for a Russian-American summit meeting,” the Foreign Ministry said, according to TASS.
Lavrov and Rubio agreed to maintain a communication channel to resolve accumulated problems in US-Russian relations “for removing unilateral barriers, inherited from the previous administration, to mutually beneficial trade, economic and investment cooperation.”
“[The parties] outlined their mutual willingness to cooperate on major international issues, including the settlement around Ukraine, the situation around Palestine and in general in the Middle East and other regional areas,” the Foreign Ministry said. It also emphasized that the foreign ministers of the two countries exchanged views on ways of putting an early end to the policy started by the Barack Obama administration in 2016 for “the maximum tightening of conditions for the operation of Russian diplomatic missions in the United States,” which entailed retaliatory measures. “It was agreed to organize a meeting of experts soon to agree on concrete steps to mutually remove obstacles to the work of Russian and US foreign missions,” the Foreign Ministry stated.
On February 12, Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump held a telephone conversation in which they discussed the prospects for a settlement in Ukraine. According to the Kremlin, Trump spoke in favor of an early halt to hostilities and of solving the problem by peaceful means. Putin, for his part, mentioned the need for addressing the root causes of the conflict and agreed with Trump that a long-term settlement could be reached through peace talks negotiations, the Russian leader’s press service noted. The US leader wrote on the Truth Social network that Moscow and Washington would immediately enter into negotiations to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
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