WASHINGTON, April 10. /TASS/. The meeting between Russia and the United States in Istanbul was devoted to the work of the diplomatic missions, while the issues of the crisis in Ukraine and expansion of cooperation were not raised, State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
"It is a technical meeting in Istanbul regarding the bilateral relations and the embassies for both of us," she told reporters.
"Again, it has nothing to do with Ukraine, nothing to do with expanding our relationship in any fashion in that regard, but really just about the nature of our embassies and the ability to manage them and conduct businesses one would normally expect to be able to do so in a diplomatic mission."
On April 10, the second round of Russia-US consultations took place in Istanbul, which lasted almost six hours. The Russian delegation was headed by Russian ambassador to Washington Alexander Darchiev. The American delegation was led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Sonata Coulter.
Earlier, Darchiev told reporters that the consultations made it possible to move forward in normalizing the work of diplomatic missions.
The first round of consultations in Istanbul took place on February 27. Then the conversation in a closed format lasted more than six hours.