RPT: PREVIEW - Pompeo To Meet Putin, Lavrov In Russia's Sochi On Tuesday

SOCHI (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th May, 2019) US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Russia's resort city of Sochi on Tuesday, with the situation in and around Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, North Korea, Iran, as well as arms control expected to be high on the agenda.

The Russian and US top diplomats would have talks on Tuesday afternoon, and would be then received by the Russian president, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Pompeo was initially scheduled to begin his trip to Russia with the visit to Moscow on May 13, but in the early hours of Monday the US State Department announced a change in the plans of the top diplomat. Instead of Moscow, he traveled to Brussels to discuss "recent threatening actions and statements" by Iran, which announced last week that it would suspend some of its obligations under the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), following the US withdrawal last year.

The announcement of Pompeo's visit to Russia, organized at the US initiative, came as a surprise, given that he had met with Lavrov as recently as last week, on the sidelines of the Arctic Council's ministerial session in Finland. According to Lavrov, the agenda of the consultations was rich, the main topic was the situation in Venezuela. In addition, the sides also discussed Syria, Ukraine and bilateral issues.

Before ministerial meetings in Finland and Sochi, the Russian and US leaders had an hour-long phone call on May 3, during which they also discussed Venezuela and Ukraine, as well as arms control.

Tiberio Graziani, the chairman of Vision & Global Trends, International Institute for Global Analyses, told Sputnik that Pompeo's visit to Russia was a signal of the Trump administration to both domestic opposition and Moscow about its readiness to boost talks with Russia.

"With this meeting in May, which takes place in Russia, Trump wants to send a signal to the internal opposition coagulated in the so-called Deep State and open new negotiations with Moscow," Graziani said.

Both the Russian Foreign Ministry and the State Department announced that their top diplomats would address a wide range of pressing international issues.

This, in particular, includes crisis-hit Venezuela, where the United States supports opposition leader and self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido, while Russia along with China recognizes Nicolas Maduro as legitimate president. The tensions in the Latin American country further flared up in late April, when Guaido made a fresh attempt to depose Maduro, staging a demonstration in front of La Carlota military base in Caracas. However, the attempt has "failed completely," as the Venezuelan government has put it.

Lavrov and Pompeo will also address the situation in Iran amid the heightened tensions around the JCPOA, which Russia is party to, and continuing sanctions pressure from the United States.

Furthermore, the two sides will address the situation on the Korean Peninsula in the light of the failure of the US-North Korea summit in Hanoi, the Russia-North Korea summit in Vladivostok last month, as well as short-range missile tests by Pyongyang on May 4 and 9.

The agenda of the Tuesday talks will also include Syria, which has been mired in a civil war since 2011, with the government forces fighting against numerous opposition groups as well as militant and terrorist organizations. A senior State Department official noted in a conference call on Friday that the United States and Russia, which have their troops in Syria, had a "very productive deconfliction channel," noting that Washington would continue to use this type of communication.

Last but not the least, the diplomats will discuss the situation in Ukraine in the wake of the last month's presidential election in the Eastern European country, which resulted in the landslide victory of Volodymyr Zelenskiy over incumbent president Petro Poroshenko.

Graziani noted that even though there were many topics on the table, the upcoming talks in Sochi were unlikely to bear any significant results, but still necessary step toward better understanding between the two countries.

"I don't expect much from these meetings. However, I believe they are necessary to help US and Russian leaders define the general picture that appears very confusing, in particular because of the trade wars triggered by Trump," the expert said.

The top diplomats might also touch upon the criminal proceedings against Russian and US citizens in each other's countries. A senior State Department official told reporters on Friday that he did not rule out that Pompeo could address the case of US citizen Paul Whelan, who was arrested in Russia in December on charges of espionage.

Meanwhile, Alexander Brod, a senior member of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, told Sputnik that relatives of Russian citizen Bogdana Osipova, who is awaiting sentence in the United States for kidnapping her own children, urged Lavrov and Pompeo to raise the woman's case during their upcoming meeting in Sochi.

According to a senior State Department official, Pompeo will discuss possible new agreements on arms control with the Russian leadership during his trip to Sochi.

"The issue high on the agenda for the discussions will be arms control ... President Trump has made clear that he wants arms control agreements that reflect modern reality," the official told reporters on Friday.

Moscow and Washington have been at odds over arms control issues since Trump in February announced that the United States would withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which stipulated the destruction of all cruise or ground-launched ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (310 and 3,400 miles).

Another bilateral agreement in question is the New START. The accord went into force in 2011 and covers a 10-year period with the possibility of a five-year extension. The agreement limits the number of deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, nuclear armed bombers, and nuclear warheads.

Lavrov said the New START would be one of the central topics of talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

"I believe this [the fate of New START] will be one of the central topics of our talks," Lavrov told a press conference after talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

The Russian minister noted that fulfillment of commitments on controversial issues must be resolved, including modernization of US strategic bombers.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Sputnik on Monday that a possible meeting between the Russian and US presidents at the G20 summit in the Japanese city of Osaka in late June might be discussed during Pompeo's visit to Sochi.

"I do not rule out that it could become a topic for discussion," Ryabkov said.

The deputy minister noted, however, that even though the G20 summit in Japan was hypothetically a good opportunity for a meeting between the two leaders, the US side had earlier cancelled the previously reached agreements and changed its plans.

On Monday, Trump said that he will meet with Putin as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 in Japan. Later, the Kremlin said that no preparations for a bilateral summit were underway and ruled out a trilateral US-Russia-China meeting due to statements coming from the Chinese side.

The G20 summit in Osaka is scheduled to take place from June 28-29.