US,Russia tried to keep tensions check over Ukrain

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks in Geneva on Friday over the Ukraine crisis. They  reportedly agreed  to keep diplomacy alive in their standoff over Ukraine, even as both sides continued to raise the military stakes on the ground. The United States has called on Russia to pull back thousands of troops it has massed near the border with Ukraine, warning any incursion would be met with a swift, severe and united response from the White House and its partners. Moscow denies it is planning an attack, and demands that the US-headed NATO military alliance end activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine and never embrace the former Soviet republic as a new member. According to Reuters the top U.S. and Russian diplomats made no major breakthrough at talks on Ukraine.

Blinkan told his Russian counterpart that the United States would provide written responses next week to Russia’s demands that the West scale back its military presence in Eastern Europe. Both sides said that the diplomats planned to speak again after that, and they left the door open to another conversation between President Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin to try to resolve the crisis. Lavrov described the talks as “a useful, honest discussion,” while Blinken called them “direct, businesslike” and “not polemical.”  Meanwhile, the State Department has confirmed this week that the Biden administration approved an additional $200 million in defensive military aid to Ukraine, on top of $450 million in the past fiscal year.