Representatives of Russia and the United States plan to meet next week to discuss improving relations after the war in Ukraine brought them to their worst state since the Cold War, a Russian diplomat said, quoted by Reuters.
After Russian forces accelerated their advance in Ukraine last year, US President Donald Trump said he wanted to reach a peace agreement to end the war that has claimed many lives.
Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke last Wednesday with the aim of improving relations and ending the war, and on Tuesday American and Russian officials met in Riyadh with the same goal.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who is in charge of Moscow's relations with Washington, said that there would be a meeting at the level of heads of departments.
"We are open to contacts with the United States, in particular on irritants in bilateral relations," Ryabkov was quoted as saying by the state news agency TASS. "We expect real progress when the meeting scheduled for the end of next week takes place," he added.
Trump said it was not practical for Ukraine to become a member of NATO and that he saw support for the statement by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegsett that Ukraine would not actually return to its 2014 borders.
Russia currently controls almost a fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, about 75 percent of Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions and over 99 percent of Luhansk region.