Some more diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing (From RFE/RL's news desk):
Leaders of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) are meeting in Moscow on November 13 with Russian Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin and Russia's PACE delegates.
The visit by PACE President Anne Brasseur and others from PACE's presidential committee is part of a dialogue following talks with Naryshkin in Paris in early September.
The visiting delegation also includes PACE Secretary-General Wojciech Sawicki and the heads of PACE's five political groups.
Brasseur and Naryshkin are also to hold separate bilateral talks on November 13.
In April, after the European Union sanctioned Russia for its role in Ukraine’s crisis, Russia’s voting rights in PACE were suspended until January 26, 2015.
European Commission officials have told RFE/RL that EU sanctions against Russia won't be reduced soon, and could be expanded further amid NATO allegations of recent Russian military deployments into eastern Ukraine.
As RFE/RL's news desk reports, Dmitry Medvedev has been discussing Western sanctions against his country:
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev says it is up to the West to improve severely strained relations with Moscow by scrapping sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis.
Medvedev spoke after an East Asia summit in Burma, also known as Myanmar, where he said he exchanged greetings with Barack Obama but had no substantive discussion with the U.S. president.
"I hope this period of...our relations with Europe and the United States will be overcome, but I emphasize, the ball is in their court" -- they must take the necessary decisions," Medvedev said.
"It's necessary to simply abandon sanctions... to return to normal, productive talks -- then everything will stabilize," he addd.
The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
(TASS, Interfax, Reuters)