US and Russia have no channel of dialogue about Ukraine - Lavrov
Moscow and Washington have no channel of dialogue on Ukraine, all contacts are reduced to calls to be careful.
This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, reports Censor.NЕТ with reference to Interfax.
"We have no channel of dialogue. The U.S. military says that periodically (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark) Milley calls (Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces) General (Valery) Gerasimov, (Pentagon chief Lloyd) Austin talked to (Russian Defense Minister) Sergei) Shoigu a couple of times during this time. This is good, this is useful. But everything is limited to the fact that we have to be careful. That's how it is, if summarized," the Russian Foreign Minister said.
Speaking, in particular, about the contacts between Russia and the United States on strategic stability, Lavrov said: "They are very interested in the resumption of inspections. Including, naturally, we are analyzing the situation, according to our assessment, they need it in order to understand, "What if suddenly, what should we expect. This is despite all the spells about the inadmissibility of nuclear war, to which we are still committed".
Russia does not intend to ask the US side to resume the dialogue, Lavrov said.
"We do not want to express any wishes, because they know perfectly well that it was not us who interrupted the dialogue, so what to ask now - let's resume the dialogue, we are not going to, it is not in our tradition," the minister said. According to him, "our tradition is to always respond to reasonable proposals".
The Minister said that "there were several such informal proposals from the American side during this period, and we agreed every time".
"One of them materialized - the meeting of Burns and Naryshkin in Ankara. The meeting was supposed to be confidential, but it all leaked out, not much is kept secret these days. Although we always try to adhere to such an agreement," Lavrov said.
He noted that "there were other parallel events also with reference to the instructions from Washington". "We never refused, but then these measures somehow came to nothing," Lavrov said.
