The United States and Russian delegations met in Istanbul on Thursday for a second round of talks aimed at restoring normal operations of their diplomatic missions.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the discussions are being led by Russia’s newly appointed Ambassador to the U.S., Alexander Darchiev, and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Sonata Coulter.
The primary focus of the talks is resolving issues affecting the embassies and consulates in each country, which have faced significant operational challenges in recent years due to reciprocal expulsions of diplomats.
The U.S. State Department stressed that the talks were strictly limited to diplomatic functions.
“Ukraine is not, absolutely not on the agenda,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Tuesday.
“These talks are solely focused on our embassy operations, not on normalising a bilateral relationship overall, which can only happen, as we’ve noted, once there is peace between Russia and Ukraine.”
The first round of these technical discussions was held in Istanbul on February 27.
