US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Meet Russia’s Sergey Lavrov at ASEAN Summit

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will on Thursday in Malaysia meet his US counterpart Marco Rubio on the sidelines of an Asean Foreign Ministers Meeting as tensions between the two powers rise over the Ukraine conflict.

Marco Rubio is the first visitor of region to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday and he is visiting to attend Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Post-Ministerial Conference on the side-line of 58 th Asean Foreign Ministers meeting which will bring the 10 asean member states together with other major diplomatic allies including Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, the European Union and the United States.

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This will be the second in person encounter between Rubio and Lavrov the first one being at Saudi Arabia in February of this year.

The meeting between Rubio and Lavrov is only a few days after the US initiated the delivery of defensive arms to Ukraine. The deliveries were holding up awaiting a Pentagon review of domestic munitions stockpiles and Moscow welcomed the delay. Nevertheless, this new arms refilling is as a result of worsening Russian aerial attacks on Ukrainian facilities, which further hit the relationships between the two countries.

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At a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, President Donald Trump also expressed his harsh words against the President Putin.

“Putin is not, he’s not treating human beings right,” Trump said. “It’s killing too many people. So we’re sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine, and I’ve approved that.”

Rubio is supposed to sit down with other foreign ministers in the forum where most of them are representing a country that is likely to be hit by new trade tariffs in the US. Nevertheless State Department officials stated that tariffs and trade will not play first fiddle during the encounters with Rubio. Rather, the Trump administration would want the negotiations to revolve around the maritime safety and security in the South China Sea.

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