Lavrov after meeting Blinken: The conversation was constructive, but America did not present anything new

The Russian Foreign Minister said that his conversation with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in India, was "constructive", but he did not hear anything new. For his part, a Russian official expected that no significant progress would be made between the two parties regarding the New START treaty.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that he had a "constructive" conversation with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in India at the beginning of the month, but that he had not heard anything new from the American side.

In an interview with Russian state television, Lavrov said they spoke for 10 minutes and discussed issues of nuclear weapons and the conflict in Ukraine. This was the first meeting between the two ministers since the Russian attack on Ukraine in February of last year.

"Our conversation was constructive, without emotion, and we shook hands," Lavrov said.

"All I heard was a position that had already been expressed and confirmed publicly many times before," he said. "I gave my honest and detailed assessment of New START and why we deemed it necessary to suspend it."

Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended his country's participation in the New START treaty, signed in 2010, to limit nuclear weapons last month, accusing the United States of trying to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia in Ukraine.

Moscow made it clear on Friday that it is still in contact with Washington about the treaty, but it does not see a great possibility of returning to it.

The RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying that he had no expectations of significant progress from contact between Moscow and Washington on the New START treaty.

The agency quoted Ryabkov as saying, "A hypothetical opportunity to return to this whole matter can arise only when, and if, Washington reconsider the destructive course of escalation that it is pursuing with the Russian Federation, because in all respects it is an unacceptable and destructive course for what it might call the remaining relations." between Moscow and Washington.

Russia said it would abide by the treaty's numerical limits on warheads, but Ryabkov ruled out the possibility of resuming the mutual inspections that the treaty laid out as "impossible".

New START is the only surviving nuclear nonproliferation treaty between the two countries and followed a series of agreements dating back to the 1970s that halted the Cold War arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Security analysts say a collapse of the treaty or failure to renew it when it expires in 2026 would increase nuclear risks at a time of escalating confrontation between Moscow and Washington over the war in Ukraine.