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No work on new Putin-Biden talks currently under way — Russian diplomat

If nothing changed today, a new top-level Russian-US contact is not in the works at present, as far as I know, Sergey Ryabkov said
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov
© Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS

GENEVA, January 11. /TASS/. A new conversation between the Russian and US presidents, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, is not in the works at the moment, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters on Monday following Russian-US consultations on security guarantees in Geneva.

"If nothing changed today, a new top-level [Russian-US] contact is not in the works at present, as far as I know," he said.

The Russian-US consultations on security guarantees were held in Geneva on Monday. On January 12, a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council will be held in Brussels and the OSCE Permanent Council will gather for a meeting in Vienna on the following day. The central topic of these meetings will be Russia’s initiatives on security in the Euro-Atlantic region.

On December 17, the Russian foreign ministry released two Russian draft agreements on security guarantees for the United States and NATO. One of the things Russia insists on is a guarantee from NATO that it will not expand any further eastwards and that Ukraine will not be admitted to the alliance. Apart from that, Russia insists on a ban on the deployment of serious offensive weapons, including nuclear arms.