At a press conference after talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the official stressed that it was one of the results of the meeting, although the White House representatives again tried to make any progress conditional on the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

“Our US colleagues again tried to prioritize the problems on the Russian-Ukrainian border, tried to make everything else conditional on the need for a so-called deescalation. This has already passed to be a kind of incantation,” he noted.

He warned that at this moment any discussion about relations between Moscow and Washington is reduced to the situation in Ukraine. “In US-Russian relations it all comes down to how Zelensky (Vladimir Zelesnky, the Ukrainian president) and his regime feel. It is not correct,” he stressed.

The head of Russian diplomacy noted that his country will not be able to assess whether its contacts with Washington are on the right or wrong track until it receives written answers from the United States to all issues mentioned in the draft agreements delivered to the counterpart.

He said that during the talks with Blinken he broached the subject of US spheres of influence in Europe. “An unstable Ukraine is, in fact, a factor of our common political life,” the US official assured.

According to Lavrov, Blinken said he was satisfied with the exchange of views they had during the meeting, which will help them next week to provide a written response to the Russian side.

He noted, however, that the US delegation repeated the same arguments about “freedom of choice of sides and military alliances.”

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