Moscow seeks details of proposed EU-Russia talks

MOSCOW

Russia on Thursday asked the EU member states to come up with details of the proposed summit between the bloc and Moscow.

"Yes, we have heard about the proposal of France and Germany to hold a Russia-EU summit, we do not know other details, what is it about, what the agenda of the summit will be, just as we do not know whether the rest of the EU members agree with this, so we need our colleagues to explain what they mean and what they are striving for," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a news conference in Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in regular contact with German and French leaders but they did not touch upon this topic, Lavrov said.

He suggested that the proposal can be connected with the recent meeting of the Russian and US presidents in Geneva, Lavrov said.

"There is probably some chronological connection with the summit of Putin and [US President Joe] Biden, which took place in Geneva. Perhaps this was perceived in Europe as a signal that now it is possible for them to show a little bit of their independence too. We'll see. There are a lot of unclear things here, before we react specifically, we need to understand what will be discussed," he said.

However, the EU policy of "push back, containment and engagement" is clear to Russia, Lavrov said.

"Just a few days ago, the EU approved a new policy towards the Russian Federation, which is formulated as a three-pronged policy, push back, contain and engage ... Let's see what exactly this will result in," he said.

In a separate statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested a EU leaders' summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to improve relations.

Peskov, as well as Lavrov, said there is no enough information at the moment to comment on the topic.​​​​​​​