WASHINGTON/MOSCOW: US and Russian officials will hold security talks on Jan. 10 to discuss concerns about their respective military activity and confront rising tensions over Ukraine, the two countries said. A spokesperson for the Biden administration announced the date late on Monday, and said Russia and NATO were also likely to hold talks on Jan. 12, with a broader meeting including Moscow, Washington and other European countries set for Jan. 13.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov confirmed those dates on Tuesday and said he hoped the talks with the United States in Geneva would launch a process that would give Moscow new security guarantees from the West. Such guarantees are a longstanding demand of Moscow, which alarmed the West by massing tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine in the past two months.

The Jan. 12 NATO meeting would be held in Brussels, Ryabkov said, while the Jan. 13 talks would involve the Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which includes the United States and its NATO allies, as well as Russia, Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states.

CONCERNS ON THE TABLE

Russia’s deployment of troops near Ukraine has raised fears in the West that Moscow, which seized Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 and has since backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine, may be poised for a new attack.