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GENEVA (AP) — Senior U.S. and Russian officials launched special talks on strategic stability on Monday as part of a flurry of diplomatic activity in Europe this week aimed at defusing tensions over a Russian military buildup on the border with Ukraine, though no major breakthrough was immediately in sight. 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and his delegation arrived under Swiss police escort at the U.S. diplomatic mission for face-to-face talks with Wendy Sherman, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, and her team. The meeting is part of “Strategic Security Dialogue” talks on arms control and other broad issues launched by Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin during a June summit in the Swiss city. 

After nearly seven hours of talks, Sherman told reporters the dialogue did not reach the level of a negotiation but instead was a “candid, clear-eyed” conversation for each country to understand the other’s position.

Still, Sherman said, she reiterated the clear U.S. call for de-escalation from Russia, which has amassed an estimated 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s border in steps that have raised concerns about a possible deeper military intervention there. 

The deputy secretary said it wasn’t clear whether Russia was ready to de-escalate or instead provoke deterrence from the United States by bucking diplomacy, something that would at least lead to economic sanctions from the United States, among other consequences.

“I don’t think we know the answer to that,” Sherman said of whether Russia had made clear its appetite for de-escalation.

“Of course, I have hope. But what I care more about is results,” she also said, noting she expects to speak with Russian officials again in the coming weeks.

The Geneva talks will be followed NATO-Russia meeting in Brussels on Wednesday and a meeting of the multilateral Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday. 

Moscow has sought to wrest a string of concessions from the U.S. and its Western allies, including guarantees that NATO will no longer expand eastward into former Soviet states like Ukraine.

The U.S. has played down hopes of significant progress this week and said some demands — like a possible halt to NATO expansion — go against countries’ sovereign rights to set up their own security arrangements, and are thus non-negotiable. 

But U.S. officials have expressed openness to other ideas, like curtailing possible future deployments of offensive missiles in Ukraine and putting limits on American and NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe — if Russia is willing to back off on Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said bluntly Sunday that he doesn’t expect any breakthroughs in the coming week. Instead, he said a more likely positive outcome would be an agreement to de-escalate tensions in the short term and return to talks at an appropriate time in the future. But the U.S. will have to see a de-escalation for there to be actual progress.

“It’s very hard to see that happening when there’s an ongoing escalation, when Russia has a gun to the head of Ukraine with 100,000 troops near its borders, the possibility of doubling that on very short order,” Blinken said on ABC’s “This Week.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also sought to play down expectations. 

“I don’t think that we can expect that these meetings will solve all the issues,” he told reporters in Brussels on Monday after talks with Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. “What we are hoping for is that we can agree on a way forward, that we can agree on a series of meetings, that we can agree on a process.”

Russia has said that it wants the issue resolved this month, but NATO is wary that Putin might be looking for a pretext, such as a negotiating failure, to launch an invasion.

The United States, which has emphasized that Ukraine’s government and those of other European countries need to be included in the discussions, plans to discuss some bilateral issues in Geneva “but will not discuss European security without our European allies and partners,” Price said Sunday. 

Russia was coming into the talks seeking a clearer understanding of the U.S. position, and cited signals from Washington that some of the Russian proposals can be discussed, Ryabkov said, according to state news agency Tass on Sunday. 

He laid out Russia’s three demands: no further NATO expansion, no missiles on Russia’s borders, and for NATO no longer to have military exercises, intelligence operations or infrastructure outside of its 1997 borders.

“The Russian side came here with a clear position that contains a number of elements that, to my mind, are understandable and have been so clearly formulated — including at a high level — that deviating from our approaches simply is not possible,” Ryabkov told reporters Sunday.

Asked whether Russia was ready for compromise, he said: “The Americans should get ready to reach a compromise.”