GENEVA, January 21. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that he and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the areas of influence in Europe.

"We touched upon the areas of influence. An unstable Ukraine is a real factor of our common political life," the Russian top diplomat pointed out.

According to Lavrov, Russia does not aim at spheres of influence, but NATO’s actions towards Ukraine "certainly demonstrate that the alliance views this country as an area of its influence."

The foreign minister noted that any discussion of Russian-US ties was limited to the Ukrainian issue, which was wrong. "I wish we all thought in a mature way about how we should live in the modern world to ensure safety in terms of ongoing climate change and other global threats such as terrorism, drug trafficking, people’s health <…>. This is what we have to do. And together with this we are dealing with the fact that everything in Russian-American relations comes down to how [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky and his regime feel. This is wrong," Lavrov emphasized.