U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday in the Philippines for talks where he was expected to renew the prospect of the U.S. trying to broker an end to the war in Ukraine.
The U.S. State Department offered few details about the meeting on the sidelines of an annual gathering by foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila. “They discussed the U.S.-Russia relationship and the need to end the Russia-Ukraine war,” a State Department spokesperson said.
Lavrov largely ignored questions from reporters but the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow said he emphasized to Rubio “the unacceptability of further arming” Ukraine and “the destabilizing policies of European countries, which continue to seek a ‘strategic defeat’ for Russia.”
Lavrov reiterated Russia’s readiness for “a political and diplomatic resolution of the conflict” and commitment to agreements reached at a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska last year, the Russian ministry said.
The two leaders also discussed “the situation in the Persian Gulf,” the resumption of contacts between NASA and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos and the operation of embassies on both sides, the ministry said.
