{"id":1580453,"date":"2022-07-30T09:34:22","date_gmt":"2022-07-30T13:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1580453"},"modified":"2022-07-30T09:34:25","modified_gmt":"2022-07-30T13:34:25","slug":"blinken-russian-top-diplomat-speak-about-griner-whelan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/blinken-russian-top-diplomat-speak-about-griner-whelan\/","title":{"rendered":"Blinken, Russian Top Diplomat Speak About Griner, Whelan"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fblinken-russian-top-diplomat-speak-about-griner-whelan%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1580453&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>WASHINGTON\u2014Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday in the highest-level known contact between the two sides since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-russia\">Russia<\/a> invaded Ukraine, with Blinken urging Russia to accept a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-deal\">deal<\/a> to win the release of American detainees Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.<\/p>\n<p>Russian officials gave no public hint whether Blinken had made any headway, only issuing a chiding statement afterward urging the U.S. to pursue the Americans\u2019 freedom through \u201cquiet diplomacy, without releases of speculative information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>U.S. officials have in recent days publicized their efforts to get back Griner, a WNBA star, and Whelan, a corporate security executive, whose cases have drawn widespread national attention.<\/p>\n<p>Blinken did not provide details of Lavrov\u2019s response to what he had previously called a \u201csubstantial proposal\u201d for Russia to release Whelan and Griner. Blinken had publicly requested the call and revealed the existence of the offer to Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Blinken described the call as \u201ca frank and direct conversation\u201d centered primarily on the detained Americans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI urged Foreign Minister Lavrov to move forward with that proposal,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t give you an assessment of whether that is any more or less likely.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Blinken also said he had pressed Lavrov on the importance of Russia following through on an agreement to allow Ukrainian grain shipments to leave the Black Sea and warned him of consequences should Moscow move ahead with suspected plans to annex portions of eastern and southern Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>Blinken said he told Lavrov that the world will \u201cnever recognize\u201d any annexation of Ukrainian territory, which he said would \u201cresult in significant additional costs for Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He declined to comment on how Lavrov replied to his messages. \u201cI don\u2019t want to characterize any of Foreign Minister Lavrov\u2019s responses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In its statement afterward, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Lavrov<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON\u2014Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday in the highest-level known contact between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine, with Blinken urging Russia to accept a deal to win the release of American detainees Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan. Russian officials gave no public hint [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1580453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1580453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1580453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1580453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1580453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}