US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to avoid a standoff in Eastern Europe, Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, said in an interview with CBS on Sunday.
Confirming that the US sent diplomatic proposal to Russia, Nuland said "We want to settle these issues through diplomacy, through arms control."
"We've heard some signs that the Russians are interested in engaging on that proposal, including the fact that Secretary Blinken and Foreign Minister Lavrov will likely speak this week," she said.
"Let's talk about how we can de-escalate, with regard to exercises, with regard to military deployments, let's have that conversation on a reciprocal basis."
Mewnwhile, the US worked Sunday to ramp up diplomatic and financial pressure on Russia over Ukraine, promising to put Moscow on the defensive at the UN Security Council as lawmakers on Capitol Hill said they were nearing agreement on “the mother of all sanctions.”
The American ambassador to the United Nations said the Security Council will press Russia hard in a Monday session to discuss its massing of troops near Ukraine and fears it is planning an invasion.
In Moscow, the Kremlin said Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron that the West has failed to take Russian security concerns into account, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a radio interviewer that Russia doesn’t want war but sees no room for compromise on its demands.
“While they say they won’t change their positions, we won’t change ours,” Lavrov told Russian radio stations in a live interview. “I don’t see any room for compromise here.”
“There won’t be a war as far as it depends on the Russian Federation, we don’t want a war,” he added. “But we won’t let our interests be rudely trampled on and ignored.”
(With inputs from AP)