Preparations for a meeting between Russian and US presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are underway, but they are still at an early stage, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in an interview with Sputnik.
"An agreement on the meeting must be preceded by very intensive preparatory work. In fact, it has already begun. And the negotiations in Riyadh are an important link, an important element of this work. The issues are the same. If we formulate them in general terms, then the issue is about starting to move towards normalizing relations between our countries, finding ways to resolve the most acute and potentially very, very dangerous situations, of which there are many, Ukraine among them," Ryabkov said.
He said preparations for a Russian-American summit are still "at an initial stage."
Speaking about the results of the talks in Riyadh, Lavrov said that during the first face-to-face talks in a long time, Russia and the US agreed to create conditions for a full resumption of cooperation and its expansion to new areas of mutual interest. In particular, Moscow and Washington agreed to eliminate artificial restrictions on the work of embassies and other foreign institutions, and to create high-level working groups to begin work on a speedy resolution of the crisis in Ukraine.