Riyadh (TDI): The US and Russia agreed on Tuesday to restore the normal functioning of each other’s diplomatic missions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after a meeting between senior US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.
The move appeared to signal a considerable easing of restrictions on Russian diplomatic missions in the United States that were imposed by past US administrations over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and other Russian actions.
The Riyadh meeting was aimed as a step toward ending Russia’s war in Ukraine after President Donald Trump, who took office last month, ordered top officials to start negotiations.
Rubio said both sides agreed as a first step to appoint teams to “work very quickly to re-establish the functionality of our respective missions.”
The two nations have expelled diplomats and limited the appointment of new staff at each other’s missions in a series of tit-for-tat measures over the past decade, leaving their respective embassies thinly staffed.
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Rubio stated those moves had “really diminished our ability to operate in Russia” and that Moscow would say the same about its mission in the US.
Rubio said he would not disclose the details of how the missions would be restored.
Rubio’s Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, raised the functioning of Russia’s US missions with Rubio in a call on Saturday ahead of the negotiations in Riyadh, Russia’s foreign ministry said.
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Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, American officials complained they were able to maintain only a “caretaker presence” in Russia, after Moscow imposed a cap on personnel in US missions, forcing Washington to close its consulates in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg.
