BLINKEN TO MEET WITH RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER

Seeking to head off a potential assault on Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Russia’s foreign minister Friday as the two sides explore whether there is still a diplomatic path to avoiding a conflict in Eastern Europe.

The talks will seek to break a deadlock that was thrown into sharp relief last week when three negotiating sessions between Russia and the West ended in an impasse. The thorniest issue was Russia’s demand that NATO pledge not to expand eastward, a condition that the United States and Western Europe have rejected.

The White House said Tuesday that Blinken would “urge Russia to take immediate steps to de-escalate.”

Blinken departed Tuesday for Kyiv where he will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a show of U.S. support on the brink of what American officials fear is an imminent Russian invasion.

Blinken will follow that visit with stops in Berlin on Thursday before meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, in Geneva the next day.

The official warned that Russia — which has assembled as many as 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s eastern borders — could launch an attack at any time.

A senior Russian diplomat warned Thursday that the talks were reaching a “dead end.” The Kremlin signaled it could refuse to engage in further negotiations and instead take unspecified “military-technical” measures to assure its security, insisting Russia would not allow the West to bog it down in long-running negotiations.

That Lavrov will meet with Blinken on Friday indicates that Russia is prepared for at least one more round of diplomacy.

The two spoke by phone Tuesday before Blinken’s departure for Kyiv. In the call, Lavrov rejected the idea that Russia was planning to attack Ukraine and insisted that it was up to Kyiv to calm tensions, according to a description of the call published by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russian officials have said that they are expecting a written U.S. response to demands that Russia made weeks ago about NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Lavrov told Blinken in their phone call that Moscow was expecting “article-by-article” comments from the U.S. on Russia’s proposals.

The Department of State official would not say whether Blinken would provide such a response.