Although it all depends on how the situation will develop further, Washington is open for new contacts between Russian and US presidents, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden respectively, US Department of State Spokesman Ned Price said at his daily press briefing on Tuesday.
Price noted that Biden and Putin have had an opportunity to speak on the phone and have seen each other on screen within recent weeks.
He said that Biden remains open and amenable to another leader-level engagement with Putin at the exact moment where such engagement would have the potential to move the proverbial diplomacy ball forward.
Noting that there are no concrete plans on this matter yet, the Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that new contacts between the Russian president and his American counterpart could be organized when necessary, but added it is up to the presidents to decide whether a personal contact on the topic of security guarantees is necessary.
After the working consultations between Washington and Moscow, the two presidents held talks online, while the latest Biden-Putin telephone took place late in 2021.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, while accusing the US and its allies of ignoring Russia’s top security demands, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed he’s also willing to talk more to ease tensions and that there most likely will be at least one more round of diplomacy.
However, after the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s talk on Tuesday, it’s more than obvious that both sides remain unyielding in their main positions, leaving little apparent hope for concessions.
The State Department noted that Blinken made clear to Lavrov that the US is prepared to engage in serious diplomacy with Russia on a reciprocal basis and is now waiting for Moscow’s response on the wide range of serious, substantive proposals included in the non-paper the US has sent as a response to the so-called treaties that the Russian Federation published.
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