The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Burns and Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR spy agency, would not discuss settlement of the war in Ukraine.
Burns is also expected to raise the cases of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, two Americans detained in Russia whom the Biden administration has been pressing to release in a prisoner exchange.
The official said that Ukrainian officials were briefed ahead of Burns' travel to Turkey.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he could neither confirm nor deny reports of U.S.-Russia talks in Turkey.
Two Turkish officials said they had no knowledge about a meeting between U.S. and Russian delegations. A Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
President Joe Biden last month declared that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon" is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, as Russian officials have raised using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering massive setbacks in the nearly nine-month invasion of Ukraine.
While U.S. officials for months have warned of the prospect that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine as it has faced strategic setbacks on the battlefield, Biden administration officials have repeatedly said nothing has changed in U.S. intelligence assessments to suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin has imminent plans to deploy nuclear weapons, according to U.S. officials.
Earlier today, US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping agreed in talks that nuclear weapons should never be used, including in Ukraine, the White House said.
"President Biden and President Xi reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won and underscored their opposition to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine," it said in a statement.
The pair held their first face-to-face talks since Biden took office on the sidelines of a G20 meeting expected to be dominated by the war in Ukraine.
The pair shook hands at the start of the meeting, with Biden saying the superpowers shared the responsibility to show the world that they can "manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming conflict".
The White House said he had told Xi that Washington would "continue to compete vigorously" with China, but "this competition should not veer into conflict".
Biden raised objections to China's "coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan," the White House said after three hours of talks aimed at avoiding conflict between the rival superpowers.
