Blinken, Lavrov meet for first time since Ukraine invasion

New Dehli, The Gulf Observer: Russia and the United States’ top diplomats spoke to each other face-to-face on Thursday for the first time since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on the sidelines of a G20 meeting where ministers traded blame over the conflict.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to end the war and urged Moscow to reverse its suspension of the New START nuclear treaty, a senior U.S. official said.

The Russian foreign ministry said Lavrov and Blinken spoke “on the move” for less than 10 minutes at the end of the closed-door session, and did not engage in any negotiations, Russian news agencies reported.

Blinken later told a news conference he had told Lavrov to engage in diplomacy during the unscheduled encounter.

“I told the foreign minister that no matter what else is happening in the world or in our relationship, the United States will always be ready to engage and act on strategic arms control, just as the United States and the Soviet Union did even at the height of the Cold War,” Blinken added.

Earlier in the meeting of foreign ministers, the United States and European allies urged the Group of 20 (G20) nations to keep up pressure on Moscow to end the conflict, now in its second year.

Russia, which calls its actions a “special military operation”, hit back, accusing the West of turning work on the G20 agenda into a “farce” and said Western delegations wanted to shift responsibility for their economic failures onto Moscow.