MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the situation in Ukraine on Saturday, as well as the removal of “unilateral barriers” set by the previous U.S. administration, Moscow said.
U.S. and Russian officials are to start talks in the coming days on ending Moscow’s war in Ukraine after U.S. President Donald Trump shocked European allies by calling Russian President Vladimir Putin and declaring an immediate start to the talks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that his country was not invited to the talks in Saudi Arabia and that Kyiv would not engage with Russia before consulting with strategic partners.
Lavrov and Rubio, in a call initiated by the U.S., agreed to maintain contacts to resolve problems in bilateral relations, “in the interests of removing the unilateral barriers to mutually beneficial trade, economic and investment cooperation inherited from the previous administration,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear what barriers were discussed.
The U.S. under then-President Joe Biden and Kyiv’s allies around the world imposed waves of sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine three years ago, aimed at weakening the Russian economy and limiting the Kremlin’s war efforts.
The U.S. State Department said Rubio reaffirmed in the call Trump’s commitment to finding an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
“In addition, they discussed the opportunity to potentially work together on a number of other bilateral issues,” it said in a statement, without providing further detail.
Russia said Lavrov and Rubio “expressed their mutual willingness to interact on pressing international issues, including the settlement around Ukraine, the situation around Palestine and in general in the Middle East in general”.
They agreed to work on restoring “mutually respectful interstate dialogue” in line with the tone set by the presidents, the ministry said.
Trump and Putin spoke for over an hour on Wednesday, the first known direct contact between U.S. and Russian presidents since Putin had a call with Biden shortly before ordering tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
The Russian foreign ministry said Lavrov and Rubio also discussed how to quickly improve “the conditions for the functioning of Russian diplomatic missions” in the U.S.
Experts will meet soon “to agree on specific steps to mutually remove obstacles to the work of Russian and U.S. missions abroad,” the ministry said.
(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow; Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly and Humeyra Pamuk; Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Gareth Jones, Alistair Bell and William Mallard)
