NEW YORK, January 10. /TASS/. The US expects upcoming talks with Russia will help both sides to find ways to reduce tensions, rather than focus on potential US concessions, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on CNN television on Sunday.

"It’s also not about making concessions," he said. "It’s about seeing whether, in the context of dialogue and diplomacy, there are things that both sides, all sides can do to reduce tensions."

"We’ve done that in the past," he went on to say. "We did it with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty."

He reiterated Washington’s belief that Russia purportedly violated the treaty, an accusation that Moscow strongly denied.

"We’ve done it in the context of the Conventional Forces in Europe agreements, including, for example, having confidence-building and transparency and other measures put in place on the way exercises take place," he said. "And those are certainly things that can be revisited if - if Russia is serious about doing it."

Russia and the US plan to hold talks in Geneva on January 10, a Russia-NATO Council meeting is scheduled in Brussels for January 12 and the OSCE Permanent Council meeting in Vienna on January 13.

The talks will focus Russia’s initiatives for security in the Euro-Atlantic region. The Russian Foreign Ministry on December 17, 2021 published Russia’s proposed draft agreements on security guarantees that Moscow expects from the US and NATO. The two treaties - with the US and NATO, respectively - would, among other things, halt NATO’s eastward expansion, including granting membership to Ukraine, and introduce limits on the deployment of serious offensive weapons, such as nuclear weapons.