A meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov next week in Europe is still planned“Unless Russia invades in the meantime,” stressed the US minister. Referring to the situation in the conflict area in eastern Ukraine, Blinken said: “Everything that leads to the actual invasion seems to be happening: all these false flag operations, all these provocations to create justifications.” This is rehearsed and exactly what the US government warned against.
Blinken also criticized the decision that Russian troops should remain in Belarus for the time beingto continue joint military exercises. These are “exercises in quotation marks,” he said. These would be justified by the situation in eastern Ukraine. This is “a situation that they have created by further heating up tensions,” said Blinken, referring to Moscow and Minsk.