US, Russia agree to restore diplomatic missions as first step in Ukraine war talks
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(From left) US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz speaking after a meeting with Russian officials on Feb 18.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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RIYADH/WASHINGTON – The US and Russia agreed on Feb 18 to restore the normal functioning of each other’s diplomatic missions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after talks between senior US and Russian officials
The move appeared to signal a significant easing of restrictions on Russian diplomatic missions in the US that were imposed by past US administrations over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and other Russian actions.
The Riyadh talks were aimed as a step towards ending Russia’s war in Ukraine after President Donald Trump, who took office in January, ordered top officials to begin negotiations.
Mr Rubio said the sides agreed as a first step to appoint teams of officials to “work very quickly to re-establish the functionality of our respective missions”.
The two countries have expelled diplomats and limited the appointment of new staff at each other’s missions in a series of tit-for-tat measures over the past decade, leaving their respective embassies thinly staffed.
Mr Rubio said those moves had “really diminished our ability to operate in Moscow” and that Russia would say the same about its mission in Washington.
“We’re going to need to have vibrant diplomatic missions that are able to function normally in order to be able to continue these conduits,” Mr Rubio told the Associated Press.
He said he would not negotiate in public the details of how the missions would be restored.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for details of the current operations of US missions in Russia.
Mr Rubio’s Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov raised the functioning of Russia’s US missions with Mr Rubio in a call on Feb 15 ahead of the talks in Riyadh, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.
Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, US officials complained that they were able to maintain only a “caretaker presence” in Russia, after Russia imposed a cap on personnel in US missions, forcing Washington to shutter its consulates in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg. REUTERS
