Blinken met with Russian foreign minister for first time since Ukraine war began - CNN

CNN  — 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday for the first time since the war in Ukraine began more than a year ago.

The brief contact on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers meeting in New Delhi marks a significant moment as high-level engagements between the United States and Russia have become exceedingly rare since the start of the war last February. Blinken and Lavrov’s meeting comes amid some of the most heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow in decades.

According to a State Department official traveling with Blinken, the two spoke for roughly 10 minutes.

In the conversation, Blinken called on Russia to release wrongfully detained American Paul Whelan, noting the US “had put a proposal on the table and that they should accept it,” the official said.

Blinken urged Russia to resume engagement with the New START treaty, the nuclear arms control agreement from which Putin suspended Russia’s participation.

Blinken also underscored ongoing US support for Ukraine, according to the State Department official.

“I wouldn’t say that coming out of this encounter there was any expectation that things will change in the near term,” the official told the traveling press.

Blinken approached Lavrov on the sidelines of the meeting, according to both the State Department official and Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova.

“Blinken asked for contact with Lavrov,” Zakharova told CNN. “Sergey Viktorovich (Lavrov) spoke on the go, as part of the second session of the twenty [G20], there were no negotiations, meetings, etc.”

The last time Blinken and Lavrov met in person was in Geneva last January – just weeks before the Russia invaded Ukraine. Blinken and Lavrov were both present at several meetings together over the past year, but had not spoken with each other on those occasions.

As recently as Wednesday, Blinken suggested he would not meet with his Russian counterpart at the meeting in the Indian capital.

“No plans to see either at the G20, although I suspect that we’ll certainly be in group sessions of one kind or another together,” Blinken said at a press conference Wednesday, referencing both Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

The two spoke by phone last July for the first time since the start of the war. In that “frank and direct conversation,” Blinken said he “pressed the Kremlin to accept the substantial proposal that we put forth on the release of Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner,” the latter of whom was freed in a prisoner swap in December.

CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen contributed to this report.

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