U.S., RUSSIA AGREE TO COME BACK ‘NEXT WEEK’ ON UKRAINE CRISIS

Washington and Moscow’s top diplomats agreed at high-stakes talks on Friday to keep working to ease tensions over Ukraine, with the United States promising a written response to Russian security demands next week.

As fears grow that Russian could invade its pro-Western neighbor, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sat down for 90 minutes of hastily-arranged talks in Geneva.

Blinken said after the talks that Washington will share written ideas with Russia next week, voicing hope for more diplomacy.

“We didn’t expect any major breakthroughs to happen today, but I believe we are now on a clear path in terms of understanding each other’s concerns and each other’s positions,” Blinken told reporters.

“We anticipate that we will be able to share with Russia our concerns and ideas in more detail in writing next week and we agreed to further discussions after that,” he added.

“We ended up with an agreement that we will receive written responses to all our proposals next week,” Lavrov said in a separate press conference.

“Antony Blinken agreed that we need to have a reasonable dialogue, and I hope emotions will decrease,” Lavrov said.

“I cannot say whether or not we are on the right track. We will know when we get an answer,” Lavrov said.– AFP