Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for "clarification" of the US role in trying to end the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
In written answers to media questions, Lavrov intensified the dispute with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio over whether Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump reached an understanding on the main lines of a peace agreement when they met in Alaska last year.
Russia claims that there was indeed such an understanding, which it often calls the "spirit of Anchorage".
But Rubio, speaking to reporters yesterday, denied that any agreement had been reached.
"There was a proposal in Alaska, but there was no agreement in Alaska. "If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end to the war," Rubio said.
In response, Lavrov gave the most detailed version yet of what happened at the summit last August.
He said Putin had reviewed a series of US proposals that Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff had brought to Moscow a few days earlier, listing them point by point and checking with Witkoff - who had attended the summit with Trump and Rubio - whether he, Putin, had marked them correctly.
Lavrov, who was also at the meeting, said Witkoff had answered in the affirmative every time.
"That's why when my colleague Mr. Rubio says that in Alaska there were only proposals, but no agreement, it raises the question of what we actually mean by "agreement"," Lavrov said. "If one side, in this case the United States, has put its proposals on the table to resolve the crisis, and the other side has expressed agreement with these proposals, then to say that no agreement has been reached is somehow not very elegant", TASS quoted Lavrov as saying.
He added that "the whole situation" surrounding the role of the United States needs to be clarified, Reuters points out.
The critical comments by Lavrov and other Russian officials this week indicate a shift in Moscow's assessment of Washington's efforts to end the war in Ukraine, which have stalled since the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran in February, Reuters explains.