Rubio meets Russia's Lavrov in Manila to try to revive prospect of US helping end war in Ukraine

MANILA, Philippines, July 23, (AP): US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday in the Philippines for talks where he was expected to renew the prospect of the US trying to broker an end to the war in Ukraine. The US State Department offered few details about the meeting on the sidelines of an annual gathering by foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila.

"They discussed the US-Russia relationship and the need to end the Russia-Ukraine war,” a State Department spokesperson said. Lavrov largely ignored questions from reporters but the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow said he emphasized to Rubio "the unacceptability of further arming” Ukraine and "the destabilizing policies of European countries, which continue to seek a ‘strategic defeat’ for Russia.”

Lavrov reiterated Russia’s readiness for "a political and diplomatic resolution of the conflict” and commitment to agreements reached at a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in Alaska last year, the Russian ministry said. The two leaders also discussed "the situation in the Persian Gulf,” the resumption of contacts between NASA and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos and the operation of embassies on both sides, the ministry said.

Three days of closed-door talks that started Tuesday have focused on the resurgent war in the Middle East, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and, closer to home, the South China Sea, where a new clash flared Thursday. US efforts to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war have dropped off as indirect talks stalled and the Iran war took center stage.

Renewed strikes by Washington and Tehran have been intensifying after an interim ceasefire deal collapsed. Rubio told reporters in Manila on Wednesday that he planned to raise the conflict in Ukraine with Lavrov, saying that the US remained open to playing a role in ending the conflict "if that opportunity presents itself.”

He acknowledged that those efforts have "kind of fallen off a little bit over the last few months” but said the meeting would explore whether there’s an opportunity to renew talks. "We have to have a relationship with the Russian government, even though we have areas of disagreement,” Rubio said, noting they are the two largest nuclear-armed countries.