U.S.-Russia relations depend on fulfilling Minsk Accords, Sullivan says

The improvement of U.S.-Russian bilateral relations
depends upon Russia’s ability to fulfill the Minsk Accords to end the war in
Ukraine’s Donbas region, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Nov. 23 at the G20 summit in Japan.
Relations also depend upon Russia refusing from further attempts to undermine
democratic process in the U.S., said a State Department statement, as reported
by the dw.com. news site. Sullivan has been approved by the U.S. House foreign
relations committee to become the next U.S. ambassador to Russia.

Zenon Zawada: The U.S. supports fulfilling the Minsk Accords without any red lines
being crossed, most notably holding elections in Donbas only after control of
the Russian-Ukrainian border is restored, all military hardware is withdrawn
and only under the Ukrainian elections code. But it will be especially interesting
to see the U.S. reaction should the Zelensky administration violate some of
these red lines to reach a peace agreement on Donbas. We view the violation of
some red lines – to one degree to another – in order to secure peace as likely
since the Kremlin will seek to retain a large degree control of the Donbas
peace process in its pursuit of Ukraine’s capitulation. While it’s foreseeable
that France and Germany won’t raise any alarm bells about Ukrainian excesses in
the pursuit of peace, the U.S. reaction is hard to predict.