John Kerry set for first Moscow visit since start of Ukraine war

John Kerry is to visit Moscow on Tuesday for the first time since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis that left relations between the US and Russia at a post-cold war low.

The US secretary of state is to visit the Black Sea resort of Sochi and meet Russian president Vladimir Putin and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, the state department said, adding that the two sides would discuss the Ukraine crisis, Syria and Iran.

The meeting did not amount to a "normalising" of ties between the US and Russia, the state department said.

"This is part of our ongoing effort to maintain open lines of communication on these issues where we agree and where we disagree," said Marie Harf, state department spokeswoman.

One of the big priorities for the US would be to revive discussions about potential political solutions to the civil war in Syria. "Secretary Kerry and the team have long been thinking through ways to get back to a diplomatic process here . . . we get the parties to the table and where we can actually make progress towards a political transition in Syria," she said.

For Moscow, Mr Kerry's visit marks a diplomatic victory as it allows the Russian government to argue that Russia plays too important a role on the international stage to be isolated by the west.

Mr Kerry's visit comes days after Russia's celebration of the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe, which the US and most of its western allies boycotted. While Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov have met elsewhere and kept in frequent phone contact over the past two years, he has not visited Moscow since May 2013.

Ahead of the visit, the Russian foreign ministry blamed Washington for bringing about a "collapse" in bilateral relations between the two countries through the US's policy of isolating Moscow and repeated a long list of complaints against the US, including Nato expansion and US accusations against Russia over its role in the war in Ukraine. But it added that Russia continued to co-operate with the US in areas where this was in line with Russian national interests and served the task of safeguarding global security.

Russian diplomats take pride in the fact that Mr Putin managed, through a UN Security Council resolution, to prevent a US military intervention in Syria and keep president Bashar al-Assad in power. They also cite Russia's involvement in the recent negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme.

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Moscow has been pressing for a resumption of dialogue with the US, which Washington has closed since Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and its subsequent involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine.

American participants in the Elbe Group, a group of retired senior US and Russian military and intelligence officials that constitutes one of the last remaining semi-official channels for bilateral dialogue, said after a meeting in March that Russia was trying to push the US back to the table.

In an internal paper summing up the session, they said Russia was trying to force acceptance of the "new status quo" after the Crimea annexation with a mix of threats and offers for co-operation.

Valentin Korabelnikov, the former chief of Russian military intelligence, suggested during the meeting that the two sides resume intelligence sharing on common threats such as extremism, in a reference to international terrorism. But Russian participants also mentioned that Moscow was ready to use its nuclear weapons against Nato.

After his brief stop in Russia, Mr Kerry will travel to Turkey for a meeting of Nato foreign ministers and return to Washington for a summit of Gulf Arab leaders that President Barack Obama is hosting at Camp David on Thursday.

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