MOSCOW (Sputnik) — US Secretary of State John Kerry will hold meetings with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during his visit to Moscow next week, State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner announced in a release on Friday.
“The Secretary will then visit Moscow, Russia, on December 15, to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov,” Toner said.
The spokesperson added that the leaders will discuss ongoing efforts to solve the Syrian crisis, the situation in Ukraine as well as efforts to defeat the Islamic State (IS or Daesh) terrorist group, which is outlawed in Russia and many other nations.
The Russian Foreign ministry noted that while relations between the countries remain strained in light of the Ukraine conflict, Moscow and Washington continue jointly addressing certain global security matters.
"We expect that the visit of US Secretary of State J. Kerry — the second one this year — will contribute to the normalization of Russian-US relations, the atmosphere of which largely affects the global [political] climate," the ministry said in a statement.