Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will hold a telephone conversation on Tuesday with his counterpart from the United States, Antony Blinken, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zajarova, declared on Monday, while the political pulse increases around the situation of Ukraine.
“On Tuesday (February 1) there will be a telephone conversation between Lavrov and Blinken,” assured Zajarova, who specified that a face-to-face meeting is not planned for now, the Sputnik news agency reported.
The announcement comes a day after US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland hinted that Blinken and Lavrov could possibly hold talks next week.
The number two of the Department of State added on Sunday that his government sees “certain indications that Russia is interested in contacts on US security proposals.”
Also this Monday the UN Security Council will meet in New York, at the request of the United Statesto address the issue of tension on the Ukraine border, where Russia has deployed more than 100,000 soldiers in recent weeks.
In this context, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov urged the United States on Monday to stop exacerbating tensions over Ukraine.
He stressed that “The hysteria promoted by Washington provokes hysteria in Ukraine itself” and this is “the dark, very pernicious and damaging side of the campaign carried out by Washington”.
“We criticize this attitude and call on Washington and its allies on the European continent to abandon it and take a constructive, calm and balanced stance,” the Russian official was quoted as saying by the Russian news agency.
Peskov denounced that “in recent months the US media has published a large amount of unverified, distorted and deliberately false information regarding Ukraine” and called for dealing with such publications in the corresponding way.
In this sense, he commented on the CNN publications that the White House is supposedly “dissatisfied” with the statements of the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, who said last week that Kiev does not see an escalation greater than that which already existed in Ukraine and considers that the threat is exaggerated.
According to Lavrov, Russia does not rule out that the goal of “hysteria” is to cover up Ukraine for the sabotage of the Minsk Agreements, which open the way for a peaceful solution to the conflict in Donbass.
The first face-to-face meeting between Blinken and Lavrov was on the 21st of this month, when they discussed the security initiatives that Russia had formally presented to the Americans on December 19.
Since the beginning of January, Russia has been negotiating with the United States a “credible and binding agreement of reciprocal security guarantees”, while the pressure with Moscow for the conflict with Ukraine continues to increase.
In this context, Russia demands withdrawal from NATO enlargement in Eastern Europeto the deployment of offensive weapons near its borders and the withdrawal of troops and war material from Bulgaria and Romania.
The United States has deployed missiles in the Polish town of Redzikowoabout 180 kilometers from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, and in the Romanian town of Deveselu, about 600 kilometers from the Crimean peninsula.
In parallel to the negotiations and the increase in tension between Russia and NATO member countries, the UK and Canada sent troops and weapons to Ukrainewhich aroused suspicions in Moscow that armed provocations were taking place.
The government of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, delivered his written response to Russia’s initiatives on January 26, but asked not to make it public.
The Russian authorities, for their part, have announced that they will take some time before drawing conclusions about the response of the United States and NATO.
The negotiations between the two powers are taking place amid the shipment of large quantities of weapons to Ukraine by NATO countries.
