The U.S. and Russian defense chiefs spoke by telephone on Tuesday in rare communication between the two powers and with tensions rising after Moscow blamed Washington for a deadly Ukraine attack over the weekend on the Russian-annexed Crimea, Reuters reports.
The two sides gave widely divergent accounts of the conversation - the first one between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Russia's new Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, who replaced Sergei Shoigu in May.
Austin initiated the conversation and it was the first such call since March 2023, Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder told reporters.
Russia's Defense Ministry, however, said that Belousov warned Austin of the dangers of continued U.S. arms supplies to Ukraine in the 28-month-old war.
Relations between Moscow and Washington have plunged to their lowest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Over the weekend, Russia said the United States was directly responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Crimean peninsula with five U.S.-supplied missiles that killed four people.
