Can the U.S. have "a stable and more predictable relationship with Russia"?

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.