Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has confirmed he will meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Manila on July 23 to discuss the war in Ukraine. He said the encounter had been agreed after the two men spoke briefly at a reception in the Philippine capital.
Lavrov made the announcement on July 22 at a press conference following a ministerial meeting between Russia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The talks were due to take place during the first half of the day.
“The meeting will be useful in any case,” Lavrov said. He added that Moscow was proceeding on the basis that Washington had not rejected its own proposals on Ukraine, set out at the Anchorage summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump on August 15, 2025.
The Russian minister said he would put a direct question to Rubio about Trump’s recent predictions that a settlement was drawing closer. He noted that the US secretary of state had commented ambiguously on the outcome of the Alaska talks.
Trump said on July 6 that an end to the fighting was nearer than most people realised and that Putin wanted the war to stop. Diplomatic efforts have nonetheless stalled, with rounds of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva in the early months of this year producing no breakthrough.
Rubio told reporters in Manila that Ukraine would be on the agenda. He said the war had held back the ability of Russia and the US to find common ground on other matters.
“The US remains open and willing to play a constructive role,” he said of efforts to bring the conflict to a close. He argued that Washington was probably the only capital able to fill that role.
Ukraine has no seat at the table. Its foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, was invited to Manila only for a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia and is not taking part in the ministerial sessions attended by Rubio and Lavrov.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas travelled to Manila for the bloc’s own meetings with ASEAN, held as a dialogue partner rather than as a participant in the Russian-American discussion.
The Manila meeting comes two weeks after NATO closed its Ankara summit with a pledge of €70 billion ($80 billion) in military equipment, assistance and training for Ukraine this year, financed almost entirely by European allies and Canada.
Lavrov and Rubio have met periodically since early 2025, including on the sidelines of an ASEAN gathering in Kuala Lumpur in July of that year and at the United Nations in New York the following September.
