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Lavrov arrives in Paris to meet Kerry

Russian Foreign Minister is expected to hold talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday

PARIS, October 14 /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has arrived in Paris for talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Lavrov is also expected to meet his French counterpart Laurent Fabius.

Lavrov and Kerry held their last meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. They also had a telephone conversation on October 3 in which the Russian Foreign Minister stressed the need for the warring parties in Ukraine to comply with the Minsk ceasefire agreement, withdraw heavy weapons and create conditions for the OSCE to monitor the situation.

According to Kerry’s press service, the US Secretary of State gave a call to Lavrov to express his concern over the escalation of violence in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow and Washington are still divided over the Ukraine crisis holding polar opposite views.

"The Ukraine crisis has seriously shaken the international situation, and its impact will be felt for quite a long period of time. Today, it is hard to predict how things in the world are going to develop but it is clear that the future will spring lots of surprises,” the Russian Foreign Minister said. According to him, the Ukraine crisis was not a manifestation of some fundamentally new trends in relations with Russia but was the culmination of a course which Russia’s western partners had pursued for many years.