Britain seeks to thaw Russia ties
MOSCOW: British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Friday sought to open up communication channels with Russia after years of hostility
Britain’s outspoken foreign minister arrived in Russia after canceling in April a planned trip at the last minute over Russia’s support for the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Johnson told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that Russia and Britain should cooperate for the sake of global security and that the countries’ similarities were more important than disagreements.
to work together with you on some issues, Sergei, and we want to work to achieve a better future,” he told Lavrov at the start of the talks.
“We have a duty to work together for peace and security,” he added.
“Where we can I think we can we have substantial interests in common,” he said, referring to Iran,
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) shows the way to British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson during a meeting in Moscow on Friday. North Korea and Syria.
His Russian host said Moscow wanted Friday’s talks to lead to “concrete steps” that would help revive ties.
“Our ties— there is no secret here—are at a very low point,” Lavrov said.
The Foreign Office said ahead of the talks that Johnson would stress that the two countries’ simi- larities “far outweigh our current political disagreements.”
“The Kremlin has positioned Russia in direct opposition to the West, but it doesn’t have to be that way,” Johnson will tell Lavrov, the Foreign
While the Moscow visit could signal an improvement in relations, Johnson himself said he holds out little hope that ties with Mos- cow could undergo a transformation.
In an interview with Polish news agency PAP ahead of his Russia visit, Johnson said he was “no cold warrior,” but he did “not believe for a second that relations with Russia can be reset.”
Johnson arrived in Russia from Poland where he accompanied British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday.
The Russian foreign ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the diplomatic chiefs planned to “look for ways to normalize and activate the bilateral relationship.”
“Unfortunately, cutting short bilateral dialogue with Russia was London’s choice,” Zakharova said, calling the visit “long-awaited.”
Relations between London and Moscow soured after Britain sought to prosecute suspects in the killing of Kremlin critic and former spy Alexander Litvinenko, murdered by radiation poisoning in London in 2006. full-blown