Rubio and Lavrov met on sidelines of UN General Assembly: Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, met on Wednesday (September 23) with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Reuters reports.

Neither official made any public comments at the meeting, but the the Kremlin had said earlier on Wednesday that there were still no grounds for Ukraine peace talks to take place even though it remained open to such talks.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was ready to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at a trilateral meeting with Trump, expressing hope that the US would bring Moscow to the negotiating table after talks to end the nearly five-year war unraveled earlier this year.