Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking about the prospects for resolving the crisis in diplomatic relations with the United States, said that anything is possible, but on the basis of synchronized and comparable steps
Lavrov recalled that the return of the two countries’ ambassadors creates the conditions to start clearing the rubble that the Americans created when they took away Russian diplomatic property and expelled Russian diplomats in 2016.
“Anything is possible”, – he told a news conference, when asked what the next step in normalising relations between Moscow and Washington should be.
The foreign minister stressed that the presidents had agreed on the need to resolve the problems, but this would only be possible in one case:
“If we work out synchronised steps that will be comparable, that will simultaneously address both our presence in the United States and the American diplomatic and other presence in the Russian Federation.”
The meeting between Russian and US leaders Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden took place on Wednesday at Geneva’s Villa La Grange. It is the first US-Russia summit since Putin’s talks with Biden’s predecessor, Republican Donald Trump in Helsinki in 2018.