Russian Foreign Ministry: U.S. rejects Putin's proposal for video talks with Biden

The United States has rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal that he and his U.S. counterpart engage in live video talks, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Monday.

"We can report with regret that the American side did not support Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal to have a conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden on 19 or 22 March in the format of an open videoconference to discuss a number of problems which have built up between the two countries, as well as the topic of strategic stability," the ministry said in a statement.

Moscow said the development was another missed opportunity to find a way out of the current impasse in Russian-U.S. relations, and stressed that the blame for the current state of affairs rests entirely on the U.S. side.

Earlier Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov confirmed that Putin did not have any talks scheduled with Biden, because Washington had not indicated readiness for such talks.

Last Friday, Joe Biden said he was "sure" that he and Putin would "talk at some point," but offered no further details about when or in what format such discussions would take place. Putin indicated a day before that that he was ready for live, open-format video talks with Biden as soon as Friday or Monday.