Rex Tillerson
Moscow and Washington must do everything to stop the degradation of the bilateral relations. As reported on Wednesday, April 12, RIA Novosti, the Secretary of state of the United States Rex Tillerson said after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
According to him, the level of trust between the two countries is “at a low point”, and two great nuclear powers cannot abide in such a relationship. “We must do everything to stop the degradation, we need to restore trust between our countries in order to resolve the issues that are important to all of us,” said Tillerson.
The talks in Moscow, he called productive. “We also talked about approaches on how we can improve our communication lines,” explained Tillerson, noting that “the parties shared their positions on how we can move forward today.”
In addition, the Secretary of state confirmed the creation of the Russian-American working group “to resolve those issues that require immediate solutions and stabilization in order to begin addressing the longer and more complex questions.”
According to him, the change of status of anti-Russian sanctions during the negotiations was not discussed. “We have not discussed the issue of changing the status of the sanctions that have been applied as a result of certain actions that have been taken in Ukraine,” said Tillerson.
In turn, Sergei Lavrov said that “the Secretary of state sanctions today are not threatened, as, indeed, does not threaten”. “We openly discussed the issues that we had on the agenda, including those where there are problems,” he added.
The Russian foreign Minister also noted that Moscow has confirmed its intention to resolve problems in relations with Washington. According to him, in Russian-American relations have accumulated a lot of problems, including those that are “left as the bombs from the administration of Barack Obama.”
The meeting of Lavrov and Tillerson, Vladimir Putin was in the Kremlin after their bilateral talks. It was noted that their conversation lasted for five hours.