Russian and US diplomats meet in Istanbul for second round of talks

ISTANBUL — Russian and U.S. diplomats met in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss normalizing the operation of their respective embassies after years expelling each others’ diplomats. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the talks followed an understanding reached during President Donald Trump’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and contact between senior Russian and U.S. diplomats and other officials in Saudi Arabia. “There is a mutual readiness to work to restore relations and gradually solve a colossal amount of systemic strategic problems in the global architecture.” Putin said that “part of Western elites are still determined to maintain global instability” and could try to “disrupt or compromise the dialogue that has begun,” adding that Russian diplomats and security agencies should focus their efforts on thwarting such attempts. Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper house, said during a visit to Turkey on Thursday that U.S.-Russia talks should help restore the “full-fledged work of our diplomatic missions.” “I’m sure that the agreements will be reached and we will return to civilized communication, which was disrupted by the previous administration,” she said in Ankara, according to Russian news agencies. Speaking during a visit to Qatar, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the talks in Istanbul would seek to resolve “systemic problems that have accumulated as a result of the unlawful activities of the previous administration to create artificial obstacles for the work of the Russian embassy, to which we, naturally, reciprocated and also created uncomfortable conditions for the work of the American embassy in Moscow.” Lavrov added that based on the outcome of the meeting, “it will be clear how quickly and effectively we can move forward.” ___ Associated Press writer Robert Badendieck in Istanbul contributed to this report.