Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Reykjavik, Iceland, on May 19, 2021.  (Credit: State Department photo by Ron Przysucha)

By Gary Raynaldo    DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the margins of the Arctic Council Ministerial.  The Secretary noted that the United States sought a more stable and predictable relationship with Moscow.  To that end, Secretary Blinken and Foreign Minister Lavrov discussed Russia’s Arctic Council Chairmanship and the importance of cooperation given the U.S. shared stake in the region.  

 “I’m pleased to be meeting with Sergey for the first time in my capacity as the Secretary of State.  And as President Biden shared with President Putin, we seek a predictable, stable relationship with Russia.  We think that’s good for our people, good for the Russian people, and, indeed, good for the world.  And we find ourselves here today, actually, for the Arctic Council meetings, where Russia and the United States have cooperated well in the past, and we look forward and hope certainly to do that going forward, especially as you assume the chairmanship of the council. It’s also no secret that we have our differences.  And when it comes to those differences, as President Biden has also shared with President Putin, if Russia acts aggressively against us, our partners, our allies, we’ll respond.  And President Biden has demonstrated that in both word and deed – not for purposes of escalation, not to seek conflict, but to defend our interests.”

-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken

Secretary Blinken raised  “deep concerns regarding Russia’s continued military deployments in and near Ukraine, its actions against VOA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the health of Aleksey Navalny and the repression of opposition organizations, among other issues,”  the State Department said in a statement. 

The Russian Foreign Affairs Minister was thankful for the meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State. Before the  meeting, Foreign Minister Lavrov said:

“As you’ve said, the status of relations between Moscow and Washington greatly influences the international situation in general.  As far as I understand – and our presidents during their telephone conversations have confirmed it – they agree that we need to cooperate on issues where we have similar views and when we can achieve positive outcomes, for example, in resolving conflicts and on other issues such as strategic stability.  And even with such topics as the Korean Peninsula, the Iran nuclear issue, Afghanistan, all those topics where our representatives are already interacting with each other, and I hope that today we’ll have a review of all those issues.  And we’ll be ready to deal with this great workload that we have from the previous administration regarding the missions of Russia in the U.S. and the missions of the U.S. in Russia.  And if we would not continue with the global diplomatic issues, we will undermine the very basis of diplomacy, which is building bridges and improving relations.”