US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met on Thursday for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in India. According to a representative of the US State Department, they spoke for less than 10 minutes, writes The Guardian.

Blinken told Lavrov that Washington was ready to support Ukraine’s defense as long as needed, a US official said of the first face-to-face conversation between Anthony Blinken and Sergey Lavrov since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Blinken also called on Moscow to reverse its decision to suspend participation in the New Start nuclear treaty and to release Paul Whelan, an American citizen held in Russia, The Guardian writes.

“There is no expectation that things will change in the short term”

• “The secretary of state felt that the purpose of this meeting was to directly convey these three messages that we believe are in our best interest.
• We remain optimistic that the Russians will reverse this decision and be ready for a diplomatic process that can lead to a just and lasting peace. However, I would not say that after this meeting there are any expectations that everything will change in the short term,” explained the representative of the US State Department.

During a press conference after the meeting of G20 foreign ministers in New Delhi on Thursday, Lavrov did not mention the meeting with Blinken.

Instead, the spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Maria Zakharova, confirmed that this meeting took place.

She told CNN that it was the US Secretary of State who asked to speak with Lavrov: “On the way, when they were going to the second session of the G20, he was talking to Sergey Viktorovich (Lavrov). It wasn’t about conversations, it was about a meeting.”

Verbal confrontation between Russia and allies around the US at the G20 meeting

Western allies and the United States engaged in a verbal confrontation with Russia at the G20 meeting in India, international news agencies reported on Thursday.

Under pressure to end the war against Ukraine, Russia has hit back, accusing the West of hijacking the agenda of the Group of the World’s Largest Economies and trying to blame Moscow for its economic failures.

G20 foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi focused on the war, which the Russians insist on calling a “special military operation” to eliminate security threats.

“We must continue to demand that Russia end this aggressive war and withdraw from Ukraine in the interests of international peace and economic stability,” US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, according to the text of his speech provided to reporters after “Unfortunately, this meeting was again marked an unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine,” Reuters quoted this statement, reports Agerpres.

Blinken was supported by his colleagues from Germany, France and the Netherlands.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock said that “unfortunately, one member of the G20 is preventing the other 19 from focusing on the issues for which the G20 was created.”

According to the German delegation, it directly appealed to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: “I am asking you, Mr. Lavrov, to return to full implementation (of the treaty) of the New Nuclear Weapons Agreement (no nuclear weapons), and to resume dialogue with the United States. Because, as China rightly pointed out in its 12-point plan, there must be a counter to the nuclear threat.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last week that Russia was suspending its participation in the latest SNA treaty, accusing the West – without providing evidence – of direct involvement in attempts to strike Russian strategic air bases.

Lavrov’s deputy, Serhiy Ryabkov, said at the UN conference in Geneva that the US tried to “check” the security of Russian strategic objects, declared as part of the New SNO, by supporting Ukrainian attacks on them.

The representative of France at the G20 meeting, Catherine Colonna, noted that the war in Ukraine affected “almost all countries in the world in terms of food, energy, inflation” and asked the G20 to react “firmly, as it was at the Bali Summit”, where “the message was clear: in within the framework of the G20, we must propose solutions to protect the most vulnerable sections of the population, to prevent them from suffering because of Russia’s war.”

Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra told CNBC that Russia bears sole responsibility for the war and should continue to apply sanctions.

Instead, Lavrov blamed the West: “Several Western delegations turned the work on the G20 agenda into a farce, wanting to blame the Russian Federation for its failures in the economic sphere.” According to the statement of the Russian delegation, he also said that “the West creates obstacles for the export of agricultural products of the Russian Federation, despite what the EU representatives are trying to convince us.”

He said that Westerners are “shamelessly hiding” the initiative to transport grain across the Black Sea, which would facilitate the export of Ukrainian products through ports in the south of the country, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports. from Reuters.

In his opening speech at the meeting, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the foreign ministers of the participants to find a common language on global issues.

India, which chairs the G20 this year, has so far refused to blame Russia for the war and is seeking a diplomatic solution while increasing purchases of Russian oil.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albarez, quoted by AFP, told the media that, judging by Lavrov’s speech, Russia did not want to accept a joint communique after the meeting, which Lavrov himself later confirmed.