The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov arrived on a visit to Malta, during which he will participate in the Council of Foreign Ministers of the countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Council of Ministers of OSCE), reported TASS, quoted by BTA.
About the visit of Lavrov and a delegation led by him on December 5 and 6 to Malta for the meeting of the Council of Ministers of the OSCE, the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova announced at her regular briefing yesterday, as quoted by France Press.
The Council of Ministers of the OSCE is the central decision-making and governing body of the organization. It is traditionally held in the first week of December.
Lavrov's program foresees numerous bilateral meetings with his colleagues.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russian side will pay special attention to the problem of not issuing visas for the OSCE meetings to Russian representatives. Immediately before this Council, the visa of the official representative of the ministry, Maria Zakharova, was revoked - a step that the department defined as unprecedented.
This will be Lavrov's first visit to a European Union country after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. His last visit to an EU country was in December 2021, when he was in Sweden, AFP recalls.
The Russian Foreign Minister's flight from Moscow to Valletta lasted over 6 and a half hours and went smoothly. Lavrov's plane flew over Turkey, and then passed by the coasts of Egypt and Libya, noted a TASS correspondent.
The most senior American military officer - General of the Air Force Charles Brown - spoke last week by phone with the Chief of the General Staff of Russia Valery Gerasimov, the American military reported, quoted by Reuters and BTA.
This was Brown's first conversation with his Russian colleague.
"The two leaders discussed a range of global and regional security issues, including the ongoing conflict in Ukraine," a Brown spokesman said in a statement.
The conversation took place on November 27, but "at the request of General Gerasimov, Gen. Brown has agreed not to be given special publicity. The conversation was requested by the Russian Defense Ministry, the spokesman said.
Last year, Brown became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gerasimov's previous conversation with a senior US military official was with Brown's predecessor, Mark Milley.
Tensions have risen in recent weeks. Ukraine fired American and British missiles at targets on Russian territory despite Moscow's warnings that it considered such actions a serious escalation.
Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in a televised address that Moscow had struck a Ukrainian military site with a new medium-range hypersonic ballistic missile - the Oreshnik. - and warned that others may follow.
US officials said Russia notified Washington shortly before the strike.