Us-russia talks on Ukraine end after 8 hours, without agreement

WASHINGTON — Skeptical U.S. and Russian officials Monday held eight hours of “frank, forthright” discussions aimed at averting war in Ukraine but came away with little more than an agreement to continue to talk.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman, who led the U.S. delegation in the Geneva meeting, declined to say whether she believed Russia’s assurances that it has no intention of invading the former Soviet republic. And Russia voiced anger at the U.S. insistence that it will not stop expansion of NATO in Europe.

Sherman said she told her Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, that

Moscow must “de-escalate” by moving its estimated 100,000 troops away from the border with Ukraine. She did not set a timetable for such action but repeated the U.S. threat that if Russia invades the neighboring country — as it did in 2014 — it will face severe economic and diplomatic sanctions.

“It’s a very stark choice,” Sherman told reporters in a telephone news conference after the session concluded. “We’ll see how serious they are.... The Russians would tell you that (Monday’s talks) were an open bid for serious negotiation. We will see if that is indeed the case.”

The Biden administration, already confronting deteriorated relations with an increasingly aggressive Russia, offered that it was prepared to discuss missile deployments in Europe and the size, scope and “transparency” of joint U.S.-NATO military exercises in the region, Sherman said. Any steps by the U.S. and its allies would have to be met by “reciprocal” action by Russia, she said.

The U.S. is also willing to attempt to revive an agreement along the lines of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty that was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev but that has lapsed, Sherman said.

Limiting expansion of NATO to exclude many of the Eastern European nations that Russian President Vladimir considers to be part of his sphere of influence, however, is a nonstarter, she said.

“We have a long way to go,” Sherman added.