President Joe Biden’s administration did now not sanction or aid secret conferences that former pinnacle US country wide safety officers held with the Russian overseas minister, Sergei Lavrov, and different Russians on viable talks to stop the Ukraine war, the White House and kingdom branch have said.
Reporters said that the former US officers met Lavrov in New York in April, joined by way of Richard Haass, a former US diplomat and outgoing president of the council on overseas relations, and two former White House aides.
It used to be now not clear how often the group, which covered former Pentagon officials, held discussions with different distinguished Russians concept to be shut to the Kremlin. At least one unidentified crew member travelled to Russia, it said.
“The Biden administration did now not sanction these discussions,” a nation branch spokesperson stated on Thursday in response to questions. “And as we’ve stated repeatedly, nothing about Ukraine except Ukraine.”
The spokesperson was once referring to an administration coverage of no longer discussing viable negotiations on ending the struggle barring involving Ukrainian officials.
He stated the administration would proceed offering weaponry to Kyiv so Ukrainian officers “can negotiate from a function of energy when they assume the time is right”.
“But I prefer to make it clear that these discussions have been now not prompted or engendered via us and we had been no longer helping them in any energetic way,” he continued. “As the president has said, nothing about Ukraine besides Ukraine.”
Reporters, quoting six human beings briefed on the discussions, stated they have been aimed at laying the groundwork for viable talks on ending the hostilities that erupted with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
It quoted two sources as pronouncing that the discussions took location with the administration’s understanding however no longer at its path and that these who met Lavrov briefed the White House afterwards.