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On May 20, Russia’s main state-owned TV channel, Rossiya24, devoted its prime time talk show, 60 Minutes, to the first face-to-face meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. That meeting took place in Iceland on May 19 on the sidelines of the Arctic Council summit.Both sides assessed the meeting as positive and constructive, and Russian state media’s coverage of the meeting has been unusually neutral for a U.S.-related topic.However, for the domestic Russian-speaking audience, the state media coverage missed some details, such as the fact that Blinken spoke about the fate of Alexey Navalny, the imprisoned opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and about Russian government pressure against U.S.-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).Yet, despite the overall measured tone, Russian state television delivered blow after blow against the U.S. in its coverage of the Blinken-Lavrov meeting, particularly against U.S. President Joe Biden.Yevgeny Popov, who co-hosts 60 Minutes, which claims nearly 400 million viewers on YouTube alone, began the May 20 edition with an apparent attack on Biden, saying:In Reykjavik
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