He stressed that it was a brief contact, not a full bilateral meeting. “But in a broader sense, we will not apologize for actions in our interest,” RIA Novosti quoted Price’s speech to reporters as saying. So the State Department representative responded to the media’s question about whose initiative the contact occurred.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported that on the sidelines of the G20 in New Delhi, the US Secretary of State requested contact with the Russian minister. About the way Sergey Lavrov spoke, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted, emphasizing that “there were no negotiations, meetings, etc.”
The brief conversation between the diplomats did not last more than ten minutes. Blinken managed to raise three issues: on Ukraine, which the United States intends to continue supporting; he asked Moscow to reconsider the decision to suspend participation in START; and also requested the release of Paul Whelan, an American convicted in the Russian Federation for espionage.
