US Secretary of State Pompeo Meets with Russia’s FM Lavrov to Discuss Arms Control

▶️ U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Tuesday, December 10.

👉 Arms control, Ukraine and Syria are headlining meetings Tuesday between U.S. President Donald Trump, Secretary Pompeo, and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, who is making his first trip to Washington since May 2017.

Lavrov met Pompeo first at the State Department, where the two men had lunch and held a joint news conference. Neither man spoke to reporters as they posed for photographs at the start of their talks.

The pair will then make the short trip to the White House, where they will meet with Trump. The meeting comes as bilateral ties between the United States and Russia are strained over allegations of election meddling, as well as the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.

The talks appear to have been initiated after Putin said last week that Moscow was eager to extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty by the end of this year “without any preconditions.” At the recent NATO summit in London, Trump said that he was aware of Moscow’s desire to “do a deal” on arms control, and said that China could also be brought into the process.

Pompeo and Lavrov met several times this year, including in Russia and in New York at the United Nations. Lavrov has not been in Washington since he met Trump at the White House in May 2017, a meeting that led to accusations that Trump divulged classified information during the talks.