WASHINGTON: The United States will consider every means to advance diplomacy with Russia if it sees an opening, but at the moment Moscow shows no sign of willingness to engage in meaningful talks, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday.
“Every indication is that far from being willing to engage in meaningful diplomacy, President Putin continues to push in the opposite direction,” Blinken said at a press conference with his French counterpart Catherine Colonna.
“We consider and will consider every means to advance diplomacy if we see an opening to advance it by whatever means, of course we’ll always look at it,” he said, but added that Moscow was instead “doubling and tripling down” on its aggression.
Russia has intensified its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s power and water infrastructure this week in what Ukraine and the West call a campaign to intimidate civilians ahead of the cold winter.
Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview that Russia was willing to engage with the United States or with Turkey on ways to end the war, now in its eighth month, but had yet to receive any serious proposal to negotiate.
The biggest conflict in Europe in decades has drawn comparisons with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and raised questions about whether Washington and Moscow should engage in talks to avoid an expansion of the war, including a nuclear confrontation.
Blinken and other US officials have repeatedly said Moscow has not been interested in meaningful diplomacy.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke on Friday with his Russian counterpart, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, their first call since May, and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication amid the war in Ukraine, according to a statement from the Pentagon.
In televised remarks to his Security Council, Putin boosted the powers of Russia’s regional governors and ordered the creation of a coordinating council under Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to support his “special military operation.”
US sees no evidence Russia is interested in ending Ukraine aggression — Blinken
https://arab.news/6mce5
US sees no evidence Russia is interested in ending Ukraine aggression — Blinken
- "Every indication is that far from being willing to engage in meaningful diplomacy, President Putin continues to push in the opposite direction," Blinken said
- Russia has intensified its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine's power and water infrastructure this week
Two family members of Mexico’s education secretary killed in shooting
MEXICO CITY: Authorities in the western Mexican state of Colima said they killed three people suspected in the shooting deaths of two family members of Mexico’s secretary of education on Saturday.
Colima, located on Mexico’s Pacific coast, is one of the country’s most violent states. It recorded the highest homicide rate in Mexico in 2023 and 2024, according to the US State Department.
The local prosecutor’s office said officers killed three suspects in the 4:30 am (1030 GMT) shooting of two women, whom Mexico’s Secretary of Public Education Mario Delgado later identified as his aunt and cousin.
They did not identify a motive in the shooting or say whether they were searching for other suspects.
“Deep shock, outrage, and sorrow over the events that occurred this morning in Colima, where my aunt Eugenia Delgado and my cousin Sheila were brutally murdered in their home,” Delgado wrote on X on Saturday.
Officials tracked the suspects’ vehicle to a Colima home on Saturday afternoon and killed three people in a gunfight, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Investigators found weapons and clothing in the suspects’ home linked to the double shooting.
Delgado was appointed education secretary by President Claudia Sheinbaum in 2024. He previously served as national president of the ruling Morena party.
