US and Russian diplomats meet for more talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during the Federal Security Service board meeting. Pic/AFP

Russian and US diplomats met in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss normalising the operation of their respective embassies after years expelling each others' diplomats. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the talks followed an understanding reached during US President Donald Trump's call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and contact between senior Russian and US diplomats and other officials in Saudi Arabia.

Speaking during Thursday's meeting of the Federal Security Service, Putin hailed the Trump administration's "pragmatism and realistic view" compared with what he described as the "stereotypes and messianic ideological clichés" of its predecessors. "The first contacts with the new US administration encourage certain hopes," Putin said. "There is a mutual readiness to work to restore relations and gradually solve a colossal amount of systemic strategic problems in the global architecture."

Putin said that "part of Western elites are still determined to maintain global instability" and could try to "disrupt or compromise the dialogue that has begun", adding that Russian diplomats and security agencies should focus their efforts on thwarting such attempts. Ties between Moscow and Washington plummeted to their lowest levels since the Cold War after Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and invaded Ukraine in 2022.

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