![Can the U.S. have "a stable and more predictable relationship with Russia"?](https://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2021/01/26/7540ab50-d556-4559-96ef-35e99a45306a/thumbnail/1200x630/ff5ee79b684be54c9e9014643354f4a0/ap20314484333168.jpg)
Can the U.S. have "a stable and more predictable relationship with Russia"?
CBSN
Moscow — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov were set to face off late Wednesday in the first high-level meeting between Russian and American officials under the Biden administration. They will meet as relations between the two rival powers hover near Cold War-lows.
"It would be our preference to have a more stable and more predictable relationship with Russia," Blinken said the day before the meeting. "If these are stable and predictable sanctions, then it's probably not what we need, and we won't be judging the U.S. calls to normalize relations by their words," Lavrov responded a few hours later in Moscow, reiterating a common Russian complaint that the U.S. relies too heavily on economic punishment for its foreign policy.![](/newspic/picid-6252001-20250214202746.jpg)
Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a high-stakes meeting at this year's Munich Security conference to discuss the Trump administration's efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Vance said the U.S. seeks a "durable" peace, while Zelenskyy expressed the desire for extensive discussions to prepare for any end to the conflict.
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Washington — The Trump administration on Thursday intensified its sweeping efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce, the nation's largest employer, by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who hadn't yet gained civil service protection - potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers.
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It was Labor Day weekend 2003 when Matt Scribner, a local horse farrier and trainer who also competes in long-distance horse races, was on his usual ride in a remote part of the Sierra Nevada foothills — just a few miles northeast of Auburn, California —when he noticed a freshly dug hole along the trail that piqued his curiosity.