In the Riyadh talks, the US and Russia agree to reestablish full diplomatic ties.

Following negotiations between top US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the two countries had reached an agreement to restore normal diplomatic operations.

The decision appeared to foreshadow a dramatic reduction in limitations on Russian diplomatic posts in the United States imposed by previous US administrations in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and other Russian acts.

The Riyadh meetings were intended at resolving Russia’s war in Ukraine after President Donald Trump, who took office last month, directed top officials to begin negotiations.

Rubio stated that as a first step, both parties agreed to create teams of officials to “work very quickly to re-establish the functionality of our respective missions.”
Over the last decade, the two nations have expelled ambassadors and blocked the appointment of new personnel to each other’s missions in a series of tit-for-tat actions, leaving their embassies understaffed.

Rubio stated that the steps had “significantly reduced our ability to operate in Moscow,” and that Russia would claim the same about its mission in Washington.

“We’re going to need to have vibrant diplomatic missions that are able to function normally in order to be able to continue these conduits,” Rubio explained to the Associated Press.

He stated that he would not discuss in public the specifics of how the missions would be resumed.

The State Department did not immediately reply to a request for information about the present activities of US missions in Russia.

Rubio’s Russian colleague, Sergei Lavrov, discussed the functioning of Russia’s US embassies with Rubio in a phone conversation on Saturday ahead of the discussions in Riyadh, the Russian foreign ministry said.

Even before Russia launched a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in 2022, US officials claimed they could only maintain a “caretaker presence” in Russia after Russia set a staff quota on US missions, forcing Washington to close its consulates in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg.