Russian, US representatives to meet in Istanbul: Report

Representatives from Russia and United States will meet in Istanbul on Friday, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported, citing an unnamed source.

The report said the two sides would discuss a set of “difficult questions” including visas, embassy staffing levels and the work of each side’s institutions and agencies abroad, among other unspecified issues.

Both the Russian embassy in Washington and the US embassy in Moscow have been cut back significantly in recent years in a series of tit-for-tat expulsions that have seen dozens of Russian and US diplomats sent back to their home countries.

Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin and US Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns met in the Turkish capital Ankara on November 14 in the highest-level face-to-face contact between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.