MOSCOW, June 17. /TASS/. Russia and the United States showed the desire to look for ways out of the impasse in relations and not escalate the situation further at the summit in Geneva, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS on Thursday.
When asked to briefly describe the general outcome of the summit, Ryabkov said: "A new start. A new beginning."
"Whether there will be an upward movement - the question remains open," the high-ranking diplomat went on.
"But the fact that the desire not to escalate [tensions] further, but to look for ways out of deadlocks prevailed, that is a fact," he said.
According to him, the meeting of the Presidents mainly "passed as expected."
"There were no major breakthroughs, but given the state of relations they could not have been. Nevertheless, especially in terms of the stability and security in the field of information and communications technology, they have achieved shifts in a constructive direction. As for the regional issues - it was rather an exchange of estimates and well-known views so it passed rather predictably," the deputy minister explained.
However, the countries do not need a thaw in relations, Ryabkov believes, since "this is a term from a different era."
"We need common sense and pragmatism. And an injection of pragmatism into the relationship has definitely happened," he summed up.
The talks between the Presidents of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, were held in Geneva on Wednesday. The meeting lasted approximately 3.5 hours. As Putin noted at the end of the summit, one-on-one conversation with Biden lasted for almost two hours.