Russia offers to restore direct air links with the US, during Istanbul talks

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia has offered the United States to restore direct air links between the two countries during the latest round of consultations with Washington, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday.

Russian and U.S. diplomats met in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss normalizing the operation of their respective embassies that has been crippled by multiple round of diplomats' expulsions during previous years.

The Russian Foreign Ministry hailed the talks as “substantive and businesslike” and noted in a statement that “joint steps were agreed upon to ensure unimpeded financing of the activities of diplomatic missions of Russia and the United States on a reciprocal basis and to create appropriate conditions for diplomats to perform their official duties.”

The ministry said that it also offered the U.S. “to consider the possibility of restoring direct air traffic." It didn't add any details or possible time frame, and there was no immediate comment from Washington on the issue.

U.S. and other Western nations cut air links with Russia as part of a slew of sanctions imposed on Moscow after it sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

The U.S.-Russia talks in Istanbul followed an understanding reached during U.S. President Donald Trump's call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and negotiations between senior Russian and U.S. diplomats and other officials in Saudi Arabia earlier this month.

In Riyadh, Moscow and Washington agreed to start working toward ending the fighting in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties. That includes restoring staffing at embassies, which in recent years were hit hard by mutual expulsions of large numbers of diplomats, closures of offices and other restrictions.

The U.S. State Department said that during Thursday's talks in Istanbul, the U.S. delegation “raised concerns regarding access to banking and contracted services as well as the need to ensure stable and sustainable staffing levels at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.”

“Through constructive discussions, both sides identified concrete initial steps to stabilize bilateral mission operations in these areas,” it said in a statement.

Sonata Coulter, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Russia and Central Europe who led the U.S. delegation, and Alexander Darchiyev, the head of the North Atlantic department of the Russian Foreign Ministry who headed Moscow's team of negotiators, “agreed to hold a follow-up meeting on these issues in the near term,” the U.S. State Department said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the U.S. delegation on Thursday handed a formal notice of agreement to Darchiyev's appointment as the new Russian ambassador to Washington. Darchiyev, who has been on diplomatic service for more than three decades and has done several stints in Washington, succeeds Anatoly Antonov, who spent seven years on the job before leaving in October.

Putin on Thursday hailed the Trump administration’s “pragmatism and realistic view” compared with what he described as the “stereotypes and messianic ideological cliches” of its predecessors.

“The first contacts with the new U.S. administration encourage certain hopes,” Putin said. “There is a mutual readiness to work to restore relations and gradually solve a colossal amount of systemic strategic problems in the global architecture.”