The Reykjavik meeting was the first between Blinken and Russia’s Lavrov.
The U.S. and Russia engaged in their highest-level talks so far under the Biden administration when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met for an hour and 45 minutes Wednesday on the sidelines of the Arctic Council meetings in Reykjavik, Iceland. The meeting was considered a likely diplomatic precursor to a presidential summit in the coming weeks between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. There is, of course, much to discuss as U.S. and Russian relations have been increasingly adversarial over the past decade. The two sides are currently at a standoff on a number of issues: high-stakes cyberattacks coming out of Russia, including this month’s ransomware attack on a U.S. pipeline; the jailing and attempted assassination of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny; as well as the Russia’s continued military involvement in Syria and renewed aggression along the Ukraine border. “We seek a predictable, stable relationship with Russia,” Blinken said Wednesday. “We think that’s good for our people, good for the Russian people and indeed good for the world.”
Returning predictability and stability to the American diplomatic lexicon may be a priority of the Biden administration—restoring faith of American allies while steadying the relationships with global adversaries— but at what cost? One particularly challenging sticking point in the relationship repair effort is the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which Europe wants, Russia is building, and the U.S. sees as a national security threat. The $11 billion project connecting Russian natural gas to Germany would nearly double Europe’s energy supply, but, the U.S. is concerned it would also give Russia enormous political and economic leverage over the continent.
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Trump administration sanctions stalled the project for more than a year with the pipeline 100 miles short of completion and the Biden White House has been wrestling with whether to aggressively expand sanctions to try to detonate the project or stand back and allow its completion as an offering to European allies, particularly Germany. Attempting to scupper the deal would possibly require the U.S. to sanction German companies involved in the project, in addition to sanctions on Russian entities; sanctioning an ally is not likely to mend any past disagreements, leaving the White House with a difficult prioritization of the country’s diplomatic and national security interests.
Advertisement Advertisement AdvertisementAhead of Wednesday’s meeting, the U.S. government announced sanctions on some of the smaller players involved in the project, while waiving sanctions on the Swiss-headquartered Russian company overseeing the project. The move angered Russia hawks in Congress and indicates the Biden administration is prioritizing restoring U.S.-Europe relations while continuing to oppose the pipeline. “The administration inherited a pipeline that was over 90 percent complete,” a senior State Department official involved in the sanctions decision-making told the Washington Post. “Stopping it has always been a long shot, but that doesn’t mean we’re ready to give up that last 10 percent.”
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