US and Russia to hold talks on embassy operations

A new round of talks between the US and Russia will take place in Istanbul on 10 April, with the parties focusing exclusively on the normalisation of their embassy operations.

"These talks are solely focused on our embassy operations, not on normalising a bilateral relationship overall, which can only happen, as we've noted, once there is peace between Russia and Ukraine," US Department of State spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

She said that the US and Russian delegations would try to "make progress on further stabilising the operations of our bilateral missions"  during the talks in Türkiye.

No political or security issues, including Ukraine, will be on the agenda of the meeting.

The previous round of talks between the US and Russia took place on 27 February.

Following that meeting, the US Department of State announced that Moscow and Washington had outlined specific initial steps to stabilise the operations of their diplomatic missions.