Russia agreed to talk with America.
Russia accepted the US request for a meeting between US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
This is what the spokesman for the US State Department, Ned Price, said today. He said that Washington still expects the talks to take place in the coming days.
Blinken said yesterday that he would use the planned call to pressure Lavrov to respond to a “significant offer” made by US President Joseph Biden’s administration to Moscow to secure the release of the citizens. Americans – basketball player Brittney Griner and Marine Paul Whelan, who are imprisoned in Russia.
After months of internal debate, the Biden administration offered to swap Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the US, for Griner and Whelan.
In 2020, Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage. He and his family all the time claim that he was unjustly convicted and these accusations have been denied by the US government.
Basketball player Brittney Griner, who has been in a Russian prison for several months, admitted in court that she had cannabis oil in her luggage when she was at the Moscow airport, stating that she had accidentally packed it in her suitcase.
Their last conversation took place on February 15 of this year, ten days before the start of the conflict in Ukraine.