Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
No agenda has been publicly announced.
The 81st session of the UN General Assembly has drawn nearly 130 world leaders to New York, and almost every bilateral in the corridors has been shadowed by the war in Ukraine. The most closely watched is the one that involves neither side of the front line.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is scheduled to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday morning, September 23, according to Russian state agency TASS, which cited the Russian foreign ministry, and confirmed by a State Department announcement made Tuesday as reported by AFP.
“As far as I know, a meeting between Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio is scheduled for September 23,” Kirill Logvinov, director of the Department of International Organizations at the Russian foreign ministry, told reporters, TASS said.
Ukraine tops the agenda
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who first signaled the meeting was being lined up last week, said the Ukraine war would headline Lavrov’s schedule in New York.
Zakharova told TASS, in comments reported by Ukrainian outlet UNN, that “the issue of the war against Ukraine would be among the key topics” during Lavrov’s contacts on the assembly sidelines.
Neither Moscow nor Washington has published a detailed agenda. UNN noted that “the Russian side has not yet disclosed which specific issues concerning Ukraine it plans to raise during possible talks with U.S. representatives.”
Zakharova had earlier said Russia was “working on the schedule of working meetings on the sidelines of the General Assembly,” according to TASS, adding that Washington’s UN policy had become “more pragmatic” since President Donald Trump returned to office.
Parallel track to the Trump-Zelensky bilateral
The Rubio-Lavrov encounter comes a day after Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in New York on Tuesday, September 22, for a bilateral centered on ending the war.
Trump told reporters afterward that “I think they’re going to reach a deal, and I don’t want to say what the deal will be,” The Jerusalem Post reported, and said his administration was still in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Patriot missile deployments to Ukraine were also on the table, according to the same account.
Zelensky is due to address the General Assembly the same day the Lavrov-Rubio meeting is scheduled. The high-level general debate runs through September 28.
