Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin
(Picture: ES Composite)Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden have no plans to meet for the time being, the Kremlin said on Friday after Russia’s deputy foreign minister said Moscow was not ruling out high-level meetings between the two countries.
“A summit is out of the question at the moment,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Moscow’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov earlier said he is willing to meet with his US counterparts to discuss “strategic stability” amid the ongoing Ukrainian invasion.
"If the Americans show interest and readiness, we will not refuse," Mr Ryabkov was quoted as saying.
It comes as US and Russian officials are expected to meet in Cairo on November 29 to discuss ways of combatting nuclear proliferation.
However, Mr Ryabkov maintained that Russia is unwilling to enter negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine.
“No, there is simply nothing to talk about with them on Ukraine. There can simply be no dialogue, let alone negotiations, given the radical opposing positions,” he said, according to Interfax.
His comments follow reports that top spy chiefs from the US and Russia recently met in Turkey for secret talks about the war in Ukraine.
Bill Burns, the CIA director, and Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, reportedly met in Ankara in the first face-to-face high-level contact between Washington and Moscow since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The White House said they discussed the use of nuclear weapons, and stressed that Mr Burns is “not conducting negotiations of any kind”.
There have not been high-level public conversations between the US and Russia since Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign secretary, and Anthony Blinken, the US secretary of state, met in January.
Mr Biden sent Mr Burns to Moscow in November last year to try to dissuade Russian leader Vladimir Putin from going ahead with his invasion of Ukraine.
The White House said: “We have been very open about the fact that we have channels to communicate with Russia on managing risk, especially nuclear risk.”
