Russian and US diplomats set for Istanbul meeting

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Russian and US diplomats will meet in Istanbul on 27 February. “Russian and US delegations will hold a new meeting in Istanbul on 27 February,” Lavrov said.

The talks will focus on eliminating the problems hindering the work of the diplomatic missions of the two countries, he said.

“I think that after the meeting we will have a better understanding of how quickly and effectively we can move forward,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency.

Prior to this meeting, another meeting between the Russian and US delegations took place on 18 February in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

The Russian delegation was headed by Lavrov and the US delegation was headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The delegations, meeting for the first time at this level since the start of Russia’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine, discussed various issues, including ending the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Representatives of the EU and Ukraine did not attend these talks.

At a press conference after the talks in Doha, Lavrov said that Russia was not considering any option for the deployment of European peacekeepers in Ukraine.

“No, we are not considering any option,” Lavrov replied to a question about the possibility of deploying peacekeepers in Ukraine.

Emphasizing that the approach imposed by the Europeans, especially France and Britain, has led to further aggravation of the conflict and blocked all attempts to de-escalate it, Lavrov said: “Macron stated in Washington that we need an immediate ceasefire, the deployment of this peacekeeping force, and then talk about territories, the fate of people and other principles of settlement. This is a deception. We cannot accept an agreement whose sole purpose is to rearm Ukraine.”

The minister also ruled out the possibility of freezing the conflict in Ukraine along the line of contact, commenting: “This will not happen, we have a constitution.”

Earlier, US President Donald Trump said that the presence of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine in one form or another was necessary, but that the format of this mission must be acceptable to all parties.

The Telegraph newspaper had previously reported, citing sources in the British government, that the leaders of Britain and France had secretly discussed sending a ‘peacekeeping force’ to Ukraine after the end of the conflict.

The sources stated that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was “not yet fully” convinced of this initiative, while French President Emmanuel Macron continued to defend the idea of sending troops to Ukraine, which he had previously discussed with Vladimir Zelensky and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.