KYIV: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday he will not present a formal response to Russian proposals on the Ukraine crisis in talks this week, saying the two sides needed to explore common ground.
Russia -- whose foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will meet Blinken in Geneva -- presented unusually detailed draft proposals to the United States after amassing tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine's borders.
"I won't be presenting a paper at that time to Foreign Minister Lavrov," Blinken told reporters Wednesday in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
"We need to see where we are and see if there remain opportunities to pursue the diplomacy and pursue the dialogue which, as I have said, is by far the preferable course," he said.
Blinken says Russian attack on Ukraine could come at very short notice
Blinken reiterated that some Russian ideas were "clearly, absolutely, non-starters" such as explicitly barring Ukraine from joining NATO.
Instead of making counter-proposals, "we have raised our concern about challenges that Russia poses to the security of the European area", Blinken said.
The meeting comes the week after the two top diplomats' deputies met in Geneva and the United States proposed working together with Russia on arms control.
"We talked about areas where clearly, if there is a will, we could make progress on a reciprocal basis to improve security for everyone," Blinken said.
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