JAKARTA - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken are likely to face each other over the war in Ukraine at the Organization's annual meeting for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Malta.
Ukraine will be the dominant political issue in a meeting scheduled to formally approve the final-minute deals reached on issues including senior staff positions in security and human rights agencies where Western countries often accuse Russia of violating human rights and other international norms.
This is Lavrov's first trip to EU member countries since Russia began a massive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Reported by Reuters on Thursday, December 5, Lavrov and Blinken, whose term ends next month, are not scheduled to hold a meeting.
Since the Russian war in Ukraine began, they have occasionally attended the same international meeting but their interactions are limited.
In March 2023, on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in New Delhi, they held an unscheduled meeting that the Russian Foreign Ministry said only lasted less than 10 minutes.
Blinken then told a news conference he had asked Lavrov to engage in diplomacy.
Lavrov told Russian media the meeting was constructive, but he didn't hear anything new about the US position.
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The OSCE meeting, which was attended by foreign ministers and other officials from 57 participating countries in North America, Europe, and Central Asia, was overshadowed by Donald Trump's return to the White House, whose advisers submitted a proposal to end the war in Ukraine that would lead to a major defeat. state part to Russia.
With Trump set to take office within another month, Western countries plan to reaffirm their support for Ukraine and Russia is likely to renew his criticism of the OSCE, which Lavrov said last year "is basically turned into a complement to NATO and the European Union".
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